It’s taken almost nine months to fix the Loop after its disastrous respray episode. Why? Because whoever put it back together again had the dexterity of an intoxicated executioner in charge of a very large axe...

Regrets. We all have them but are often told we shouldn’t have. To be honest though, when I was talked into having the Loop resprayed by the cheeky Essex chappy who had clocked up 26 years at the same prestige German marque dealership, I naively thought my car would be in safe hands. Until he was sacked, of course, part way through the job. Then all hell broke loose. His colleagues were suddenly in denial and claimed they knew nothing of the (obviously invisible) VW Lupo GTI pushed into the corner of their workshop. After two further weeks of heated discussions, stress and aggravation, (including being involved in the dealership’s HR ‘internal investigation’ – yep, things did get rather bizarre) the Loop was ready to leave, but not until I was forced to pay up more dosh so they’d release the keys. Seriously. But it wasn’t until we returned home that the troubles really started...and one of those, as written about previously here, was the fact I was deadlocked in the car. Six hours of investigation later on the same day, we discovered the door handle cables had been refitted past maximum.

I’m assuming that for everyone else who’s invested in getting their pride and joy resprayed it was pretty much a seamless procedure. I can understand, though, that a few nuts and bolts can go walkies in a busy workshop, but when you can put together an A4 list of items that have gone missing, been broken or bodged, which we could do in the Loop’s case, then it starts to make your blood boil. Instead of taking the car back to said dealership for a repeat performance, we took matters into our own hands. One of the more pressing tasks to sort was repairing the front bumper and its associated fixings after the muppets had yanked it off instead of undoing its hidden bolts, reached by dropping the wheelarch liners. Both door cards’ plastic fixing clips were broken, the internal weatherproofing sheets were either missing or torn up, and there were many, many, more bolts, brackets and soundproofing bits that were missing and had to be replaced with original VW items.

Sezza’s Lupo GTI

Name:
Sarah H-J

From:
A place I’d like to
move away from

Age:
The lower end of the 30s scale

Current staple diet:
Cold and flu tablets

Recent revelations:
I currently spend most of my time despairing about the new foreign neighbours’ lack of reversing skills when parking on the communal driveway...resulting in constant near-redesigns of my Loop’s OSF. Agghhhhh!!!!

Drives:
Lupo GTI as a daily ride, remapped 1.6-litre 16v engine, currently running 143.6bhp, 132.5lb/ft@3378rpm

1998 Fiat Coupe LE 2.0 20v turbo

Wish list:
Supercharger conversion! Any ideas? Email me: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Currently getting deafened by:
Euphoria 2011 boxset

Big ups:
Dale Spiers of Martins VW of Farnham (01252 725379) for invaluable Loop advice, hubby Rob for his help, expertise and tea making skills

To read the rest of this feature see the November 2011 issue of Golf+ - available here.