How A Minor Fender Bender In My Dream Car Helped Me Change My Life

The difference between a car enthusiast and a normie is that we car-nuts love our cars. We chose them, we cherish them, and we form emotional bonds that burrow into the core of our very identity. When our cars are wounded, we are wounded. We miss them when they’re gone.

There is a car in my life that I love. A 2001 Audi TT with a turbo under the hood and a forced induction song in its heart. Fate saw my car wrested from me for two long months in the dumbest circumstances. A rollercoaster of nonsense and upheaval would pass before I got it back. This is that story.

The tale began on a warm January morning. The summer sun was rising in the sky, with clear visibility out to 10 miles if you happened to be flying overhead. I found myself making the trek down to the big city for a painful blood draw, so I was already in a petulant mood despite the conditions. As I rolled to a stop in the bumper-to-bumper traffic, inching my way towards my undesirable destination, it happened. BANG.

With a deafening crunch, I was flung forward in my seat. So loud, so jarring, that my brain took seconds to register what was even going on. Oh. A crash. This was a crash. Someone ran into the back of my car, hard. With time somewhat dilated, I flung the door open and stepped out into the street, fully expecting the rear end of the car to be utterly demolished, fragments scattered across the asphalt. Based on the sound alone, the Audi had to be totaled, for certain.

My Dream Car Was Wounded

As time resumed a more regulated flow, I found the reality was, thankfully, less horrifying. I stood out on to the still-active road to see a red Ford Focus with the bumper mashed up. The other driver exited her car and covered her face as she saw the damage. “What the fuck?” was the only real speech I could muster. I was, as you can imagine, pretty perturbed at having my already-terrible morning plans disrupted by further pain and suffering.

Ultimately, the Audi got the better of the Ford in this collision. The hapless hatchback had a badly buckled hood and disfigured bumper, much the worse for wear. The Audi, on the other hand, didn’t look so bad. An initial glance showed the rear end to be mostly intact, despite my initial fears. There was damage to the trunk trim, and a taillight was now cracked. Closer inspection revealed the bumper had been cracked in three places, however, and there was now a nice reverse imprint of the Ford’s license plate stamped into the plastic.

Upon assessing the damage, I realized this wasn’t some huge crash, despite how loud it sounded in the cabin. I got on with exchanging details with the other driver, who amusingly advised me she was leaving the country in a mere few hours. “I’m sure this won’t complicate things,” I thought to myself. I then made it to my blood draw, just barely on time, and strangely found the procedure less painful than expected, perhaps thanks to the distraction of having to figure out what to do with my lightly battered roadster.

Had this been a daily beater, I might have made the decision to just do some junkyard repairs myself. That idea flew out the window after half an hour of trying to figure out where to source replacement taillights for a 25-year-old sports car. Never mind the quite difficult job of replacing and color-matching a bumper and dealing with all the other minor things that were now wrong with the rear end.

The decision was made. The Audi would have to go to a crash repairer. Only, there was a problem. I had third-party insurance, which only really covers the damage I do to other people’s stuff by driving into it. It doesn’t help me a lot if other people drive into me. In this case, the other driver was 100% at fault because they rear-ended my car. If I had comprehensive insurance, I could call up the company, and they would deal with recovering costs from the other driver and handling the whole thing. Without that, it would traditionally be up to me to chase down the other driver to cover my repairs or make a claim on their own insurance. This was going to be a huge pain, complicated by the fact that the other driver was becoming difficult to contact now that she was out of the country.

Eventually, I found a crash repairer that specializes in no-fault cases like these. They fix your car, and wrangle the other driver and their insurance company to make sure they actually pay for everything. They looked over my case, took my keys, and told me they’d get it sorted. I felt like everything was going to be fine, and given the limited damage, I’d have my car back in a few short weeks. In the meantime, I had a big old family SUV as a hire car, in place of my lithe little roadster. At the very least, the chunky Honda CR-V would be easier to maneuver over speed bumps.

The Rental That Helped Me Change My Life

Things started going sideways from the drop. The crash repairer couldn’t get hold of the other driver, who was now halfway around the world on holiday. Eventually, I managed to reach out on WhatsApp and get enough insurance information to get the ball rolling. More days rolled by, at which point I found out the other driver’s partner had failed to enter any of my details into the insurance claim. I then had to ring somebody else’s insurance company and walk them through the basic details of the accident. Then I had to listen to them try to tell me that they might not cover the cost of a hire car. Which, given my car was going to be laid up for weeks, felt mean-spirited. I was pretty sure it was just threatening hot air on their part, but I really didn’t want to get stuck with a bill at the end of all this, given that their customer wrecked my car. 

It ended up taking over a week just for the insurer to approve repairs. Once that hurdle was overcome, I figured it would be smooth sailing, and I’d have my car back in short order. Only… four weeks went by. Then five, then six. Radio silence. It felt like a long time to do a bumper and a taillight, so I rang up. “Oh, yes. They’ve ordered the parts. They’re going to start working on your car soon. It should be ready by next week.” Okay, then…

Only, more time went by… and I heard nothing. I knew I should be following up, knew I should be chasing my car and what was going on… but life was growing rapidly more complicated, and I didn’t have the capacity to care. Nothing happens in a vacuum, after all. While my car was AWOL, I travelled thousands of kilometers to marry off two of my best friends at two separate weddings spread far across the country. I had an entire friendship flourish out of nothing, only to see it go down in flames. And I finally started dealing with a personal matter that had been pending for some time.

In the meantime, the Honda CR-V was making me question my very identity as a car enthusiast. It was everything the Audi was not. It was a large, roomy vehicle that fit everything I could possibly ever need to haul around. It was comfortable. And perhaps best of all, it didn’t scrape going up the driveway. I suddenly had an easy car that I preferred even over my partner’s practical hatchback. Did I want the safe, white, boring, kid hauler? Were turbos and rubber-band tires and coilovers too much to bear anymore? Was this car changing me in ways I didn’t understand? I started to wonder if this crash was a curse.

Only, the Honda would soon come in handy. It was around this time that I decided to finally come out as transgender. Now, normally this would involve making some awkward explanations to friends and more formal representations to one’s wider community. I kind of wanted to do it with more panache, though. I decided I would buy a fine piece of Swedish furniture to celebrate the gigantic life milestone, and execute a photo shoot with it to announce my brand new shiny gender (and my new chair). In turn, the hire car would play its role, allowing me to move this heavy piece of furniture to the location I’d hired for the shoot. I’d literally never have been able to pull this off in my Audi TT. I have the woman who hit my car to thank for making this shoot possible at all.

March came to a close, and the Honda, my new gender, and I were all getting along swimmingly. But I was starting to wonder… would I ever get my car back? By now, it had been nine weeks, so surely the car had to be almost ready. I was about to make an irate call when they rang me… the Audi was finally ready to pick up.

I made arrangements, went and washed and vacuumed the hire car, and dragged myself across town to pick the car up. I cosplayed as a boy because I really didn’t feel like explaining genders and the social maelstrom of the last few months to people that, fundamentally, were just here to fix my car.

I just spent two hours cleaning my hire car and driving across town to pick my car up.

Only to get to the crash repairer and find that the driver’s door lock has failed and I can’t get into the car.

Leaving in the Honda I guess…

[image or embed]

— Zoe Skyforest (@rainbowdefault.bsky.social) April 8, 2026 at 12:18 PM

Only, there was a new problem. The car wouldn’t open, they told me. Okay, I figured. They didn’t realize the keyless entry was non-functional and that you had to use the metal key instead. Only… nope. Putting the key in the barrel and turning did precisely… nothing. On either the passenger or the driver’s side. The doors wouldn’t open. The car was locked shut. “How have you been working on it all this time?” I asked, utterly bewildered. They didn’t have an answer for me, and I had no answers for them. “Leave it with us,” the guy told me. I was returned the keys to my now very-familiar Honda, and went home, defeated.

It would be another week before I heard back. They hired two separate automotive locksmiths to get into the vehicle, and they wisely elected to leave the car unlocked after one finally managed to get in. It seemed the car battery had died during the extended stay at the crash repairer, and they told me it was “very dead.” This meant that even when the key was in the barrel and activating the unlock microswitch, there was no battery power to actually fire the power lock actuators. Now, unless the Audi TT is particularly weird, turning the key in the barrel should still have unlatched the locks mechanically. However, these cars often have worn barrels that snag keys and don’t quite function properly. I think this was the problem in my case, as I’d been having some minor issues with the locks for some time. As long as the battery was dead, the doors wouldn’t unlock.

A New Beginning

However, once they broke in and got the battery charged back up, the car was once again usable, and the keys were placed in my hands. Finally, after two long months, the Audi was mine.

I was ecstatic to finally have my car back. It’s given me no problems since. The door locks are still dodgy, but I’ve had no actual problems getting into the vehicle. I should probably investigate this and fix it, but honestly, who has the time?

I decided to celebrate the return of my beloved sports car with yet another photo shoot. This time, I hired the talented Yennefer Briffa, a car enthusiast who knows her way around heavy cameras. You know, the good ones that take 30-megabyte photos. We went to my favorite rooftop and shot away the morning, before congratulating ourselves with hot coffee and “sourdough” at a local cafe (they got my order wrong). A fun bonus was getting to ride in Yen’s delicious enthusiast car – a 2009 Toyota Corolla Seca with a factory manual transmission. I’d never seen one in the wild.

Time To Write The Next Chapter

After all the upheaval and change over the last two months, having my car back felt like a new beginning. I had shed the skin of a past life, and the Honda that helped carry me along that journey. I was a new me, back in my rad car, feeling badass as fuck. The sun was shining, the leaves were trickling off the autumn trees, and all was well.

Sometimes you go on a journey, and that journey is hard. Sometimes you have to make your way down roads unexpected, take paths uncharted, and travel with passengers who will support you and let you down all on the same trip. At the end, though, if you persevere, you’ll get where you’re going. You’ll turn the key in your own car, hear the engine thrum into life, and you’ll know that everything is finally going to be okay.

It might have started with a car crash for the Audi, but I was the one who got put back together in the end. I’m glad it turned out that way.

Photos from the author, except where credited.