Our New Mazda Karma

      This is the story of a major case of culture shock that involved a garage. Just how did a brand new car get its roof crushed after being driven home from the dealer? This is how it happened, from happiness to devastation and back to happiness, in real time.

     It began one day after lunch. We rode to a Mazda car dealer on the Westside of Taichung to see the Mazda2. We spent over an hour there and made an appointment for a test drive 

that Thursday; they’d come to our condo to pick us up. The chances were small that I would pull the trigger and buy the car. I didn’t need a car, but my wife gets excited every time a car comes up in the conversation. I told her again I would not drive in Taichung; only into the mountains on vacation.

     I was warming up to the idea of buying a new car in Taiwan. Perhaps we could take more trips. I guessed it was good to have a car just in case we needed it. We could afford it, and it would be fun adding "automobile" to our conversation topics. 

     The Mazda dealer on the Westside brought the Mazda2 to our house for me to take a test drive. We asked him to show us we could fit the car onto our elevator parking space in the basement garage. It is an unusual hydraulic elevator that has space below ground level so the vehicle dips at a 35^o angle and one of the two levels can be loaded while the back remains fixed.

Mazda dealer who knew less about
  parking on a lift than he would admit

     When the phone rang, I put my sneakers on as my wife went downstairs to the lobby and escorted the young salesman to the car in the basement garage. My wife told me how he maneuvered the car onto the elevator car space, closed the door and got out, ducking his head as he did in the five foot headroom. She pressed the button to drop the car but something went terribly wrong. The inexperienced salesman had neglected to put the car into ‘park’ or apply the emergency brake so when the car dipped backward, it rolled and crashed into the concrete wall. My wife pressed the 'stop' button but it was too late. There was a six inch dent in the middle of the red hatchback door and scrapes along the fender. 

     The young salesman was upset. His boss would admonish him and he could even have to pay for the damage and lose his job. We felt badly and offered to pay for half the damage; she translated what we discussed to him. If we bought a car from him, it would be payment enough.   

  The Mazda2 engine is 1500 cc and the mountains in Taiwan are steep and require more power. We decided to test drive a 2000cc Mazda3 on Saturday, but not from his dealership

My wife had called her brother who offered to bring us to the Mazda dealer in Feng-yuan; he said he had a friend who worked there. When we arrived, I test drove a red 2015 Mazda3 five-door. up the mountain road near the golf course and liked what I felt. The car had enough power and finesse to take the Taiwan mountain roads. There was one more concern; our garage parking space. He agreed to let me drive the car home and try the space for size. It did.

The dealer backed it in to the top berth to demonstrate. I’d try the bottom later since it was a tight fit and an ordeal to get out of. Since we have the lower berth, I would have to squeeze alongside the car and duck down so my head wouldn’t hit the upper platform, then open the door, turn backward, sit sideways, lower my head, and ease in. He reminded me to back the car in to the corrugated aluminum

      We would probably go with the Feng-yuan dealer because he seemed more knowledgeable. He was also a veteran salesman and knew what to say I thought we might sign the papers that week. He even called asking if we were ready to make a deal. I suggested we go to the car dealer the next day to make the deal.

     That next morning, my wife’s brother, drove us to the Mazda dealer in Feng-yuan to sign our name to a red 2015 Mazda3 five-door. We may as well fill the basement garage space we inherited when we bought the condo. 

The first dealer had finally called back after a week, but my wife and I felt comfortable with the second, more seasoned car dealer; he had told her all the facts about financing and discounts; she had had to drag it out of the first dealer after he said no discounts or six free options. Anyway, the service center in Feng-yuan is more convenient than the one on the Westside. 

   I wasn’t going to take a bike ride that morning because the Mazda dealer from Feng-yuan was picking us up to inspect the car we would be buying. When we signed the purchase agreement on Monday, he said the car would be delivered, from Japan next month, but dealers in Taiwan keep a car stashed away for preferred customers, government officials, VIP's, and people like us who pay in cash. Our car was ready; all we need was to approve it and await license plates, probably by Monday. 

     Leona's brother checked the Lunar Calendar and saw that Saturday was a 'good day' to pick up our new car. He had gotten involved, with my blessing, to drive us to the dealer, and I agreed to let his wife handle our insurance,

     I drove our Mazda3 home Monday morning. I had jokingly told Leona to ask the car dealer for a ribbon around the car, as I'd seen in TV commercials in the States, and he came through with a little red ribbon attached to the front. It was a morning of final instructions, a once over the car, hands-on for my wife who sat at the wheel and listened to what each of the buttons on the dashboard does in Chinese. A Chinese manual, as thick as Moby Dick, with few pages in English, was in a black zippered case along with insurance card, title, and receipt. We said our final goodbyes and I drove away listening to an FM radio station.

This is all you see on the bottom
       berth when the lift is not down.

    I had asked my wife if she wanted to stop for lunch but she just wanted to go home, so I drove, made the turn at the tire shop, and up the alley to the driveway down to our underground garage. It was the first time I had driven in and maneuvered the car down the tight passage in front of the lower berth. My wife got out to raise the berth to ground level. I positioned the car and backed in as I was told, put the car in 'park' with hand-brake on, and pulled the rear-view mirrors in. Getting out, I made sure not to soil my clothes or bump my head.

Safely out, Leona pressed the button to drop the car at the 35^o subterranean tilt. Slowly, the hydraulic arms showed their silvery gleam and the car dipped. That’s when I heard the crunch, a slight, clear, metallic crunch.

"Stop the car lift!" I shouted, but it was too late. The two inch bump of antenna casing on the car’s rear top had been torn off, lying sideways, in the indentations the top berth had made on our car roof!

   My wife and I climbed upstairs to get better reception on her cell phone to immediately call the car dealer and tell him what happened and ask what to do. The dealer told her to have me take the car out and park it on the street; they would send someone the following day to put the antenna back. I told my wife to tell him the car roof was also dented; we wanted to return it to the dealership.

The top berth speed bumps visible were
 the ones the dealer instructed me to
drive up to, but those bumps are not on the
bottom berth where our car is parked

     We got back into the car, drove up and out turning left back to the Mazda dealership. I wanted a new car or none at all, if money back was possible. It was the car dealers fault; he showed the car would fit in the top berth, but not in the bottom when the elevator was lowered and headroom height was a factor.

  What went wrong with the Mazda3? The car was in 'park,' hand brake up, facing forward on the lift.

     In Taiwan, where the consumer has virtually no protection, and laws favor the management, we had no chance of getting culpability placed in the dealer’s offence of guaranteeing, in writing or not, that the Mazda3 would fit in the berth. Even if we sued the company for a new car, we would lose in the end. I stopped hard-balling the car dealer as we negotiated in the showroom. Instead, the insurance company would be contacted, and the service center would repair our car. .

     I joked that it was actually her brother’s fault because he had clearly checked the Lunar Calendar and found Saturday morning to be the best time to pick the car up.

     The repair to the car would be done as quickly as possible. The dealer apologized a few times and felt terrible about what had happened but he was taking no responsibility.

     Leona's brother called his friend in the dealership; it is the kind of networking that gets things done much faster in Taiwan. What he got was an apology, an acceptance of partial responsibility, and a free $200 alarm system. 

     I cannot blame anyone for not researching how to park the car correctly on the bottom berth; I didn’t investigate how to do it, either. The car dealer is not responsible for the damage to the car but we should not have relied on him for information about our own garage. This is what actually happened:

Cathay insurance adjuster came back to
 make a report
after we were not satisfied with their
initial determination

     The bottom berth of the car lift has two metal slats that extend as the platform dips protruding through into position going down. The car dealer had only shown us the upper berth speed bumps; if the car was up to those bumps, the car was backed up enough. He didn't explain the two metal slats on the bottom surface that gradually protrude; didn’t know about them, either. The slats are designed to prevent the car from rolling forward when it dips. I parked the car right on the slats which then raised the rear wheels, crushing the roof. 

     The dealer wanted to cosmetically repair the dents. My wife said the insurance may not want to pay for the full cost of repairing the damage. We didn’t know when we would get the car back. I did know that I would remove the happy red ribbon from the hood.

     We could have taken measures to make this transition work better. We could have asked around the building or secured an upper berth in advance before bringing the car home. We could have gotten thorough instruction about how the lift operated though it is a common device used in Taiwan, one I never saw in the U.S. 

Our building didn’t carry insurance for car damage in the basement. So my wife called Mazda headquarters in Taipei and registered a long complaint about the car dealer and the dealership that wouldn’t accept any responsibility for misguiding us on how to park the car on the lift in our basement. Her call did some good. They contacted Mazda in Feng-yuan. The manager from Feng-yuan called Leona in the afternoon, apologized and assured her that they would do everything possible to make her feel better about buying a Mazda from them; that they would repair the damage to the car roof as soon as possible. While Mazda customer service was putting pressure on the Feng-yuan branch to put an end to this episode, the manager hadn’t offered us anything tangible. We wanted an admission of shared responsibility from the dealer who neglected to show us how to park the car correctly and compensation for the damage to the cracked roof.
     Our insurance company, Cathay, was only offering 15,000 NT-$454 US but the roof change would cost over 60,000 NT - $1818 US. My wife’s sister-in-law leaned on her investigation colleagues to come to our place and write another report to get us more money.
     There was no news about our car in the Feng-Yuan shop. We were waiting for Cathay insurance to make a final offer of coverage and put pressure on the dealership to share responsibility for their salesman’s erroneous parking instructions. Meanwhile, we signed permission for the mechanic to begin removing the dented car roof. He would report back on the severity of the damage, then, a new roof would be shipped from Japan, if necessary, and installed at any cost.

At our meeting with the mechanic, manager, and car salesman, the manager wasn’t even aware of the type of car lift we had, and the salesman had no idea why the accident happened. I showed them a video I made of the lift device; the “safety feature” to prevent a car from falling off the slab. My wife translated my point that the salesman shouldn’t have assured us parking there would be safe if he wasn’t sure,

  Cathay Insurance came back again to the basement to investigate. Two young agents rode down on scooters and thoroughly checked the scene. They rode down on the lift with me and observed how the slats rose. They agreed it was awkward and dangerous. They took many photos. Even the warning sign on the garage wall was suspect, small, eight feet from the ground above the lift switch, dirty and covered over with a sticker. There was no warning about the parking procedures. 

     In the meantime, my wife contracted a woman in our building for her upper berth parking space. It would cost us $35 us a months to rent it but it would be safe and convenient
     A few weeks later, the Mazda mechanical foreman called to say the car roof could  be fixed without having to replace it, furthermore, Cathay said they would cover all costs. The car would be returned by the end of January.

       I believe our insisting that Mazda take some responsibility for the mishap led to this happy conclusion. They were going to change the roof and stick us with the cost if we didn’t put up a stink. My wife leaned on her sister-in-law to send agents three times to our basement to investigate, and she contacted the Mazda manager regularly to work it out. Yes, my wife solved the problem her way, the Taiwanese way.