I parked our pristine XJ8 VDP very carefully (one side fully protected and well away from a swinging door on the other side) at GSP airport and flew off on a European vacation with my wife. We got back on March 31 and my initial impression was that the car had been vandalized. The chrome cover from the driver's side mirror was on the ground and the driver's repeater lamp was hanging loose from it's hole in the fender. The car looked like a demented person had attacked it with a ball peen hammer. The hood and trunk were particularly bad but the roof was less so. I think its because the roof gives more when pushed in. The tops of the fenders were damaged as were the tops of the doors.

I met an Uber driver who told me a horrendous hail storm had hit the area the night before. The irony is that our original flight had been for the day before (30th) but that was cancelled by American Airlines. Had we taken that flight we would have missed the hail completely as we live 45 miles away.

As we did not get home until after 6pm on Friday, it wasn't until Monday that I contacted Farm Bureau. I was told to take the car to a body shop of my choice and get an estimate. The estimate came through today at $6,306.00. I fully expected a write-off but, as the car has only 72k miles they will pay to fix it. They valued the 2005 XJ8 VDP at $11,800 due to the low miles. I was surprised at that valuation.

Here's further irony. The forecast for today (4/5/17) for our area is heavy thunderstorms and, wait for it, HAIL.

I'll post a before and after photo when I get the work done.

Stephen

 

Ouch !! You have certainly been rather unlucky. Good to hear it can be repaired.

A few years ago on holiday in Germny we were visiting Bernkastel-Kues in the Mosel valley, and in a shop, when I heard what sounded like an air raid siren. On asking the shop proprietor what this was, she told me it was the hail storm alarm. Our car was parked in the open down by the river and we hurried down quickly, but saw no hail. However on driving down towards Koblenz, we passed several vineyards where the vines had been smashed to bits, and then, in a village, we stopped and a German was shouting to nobody in particular, "alles kaput, alles kaput !!". He opened his hand which was holding a hailstone the size of a golf ball, actually nearer a tennis ball. The roof of a house, presumably his, had the tiles all smashed. Further downstream, an Audi A6 was being hauled onto a flat-bed with front and rear screens smashed. I said to the missus, "we'd better get outa here, quick". So we skedaddled up out of the valley and made tracks for clearer skies we could see in the distance.

I think we were lucky that day.