If you guessed that the stripes are backwards, you win!
As you may (or may not) remember, Rabbit got his "bonnet" stripes back in August of last year. At the time I was kind of torn as to whether or not I wanted to do the "boot" stripes as well, but ultimately decided to put it off because I wasn't sure of the aesthetics and the cost was 150% of the front stripes. (It's the labor of removing the badging.)
Since we have a little "extra" cash these days—thanks to our former landlord literally burning us out of house and home—I decided to revisit the rear stripes. I'd seen a few around town and online and the look really grew on me. So about a week and a half ago I took Rabbit in to get his butt done. (This is normally a one-day job.)
That afternoon I got a call from my service rep informing me that the vinyl shop had discovered that one of the stripes had a pretty bad kink in it and they'd need to get another one—and the soonest that could happen was the following Monday.
So I did some internal grumbling because I didn't exactly relish the thought of two additional days in the loaner, but as Ben often says, "It was what it was."
The car was ready late Monday afternoon, and I picked it up literally ten minutes before the shop closed. I walked outside and snapped the quick picture you see above.
Something seemed off, but I couldn't put my finger on it.
While I was stopped on the way home, I looked at the photo and then looked at the hood stripes. They'd applied the rear stripes backward! The narrow stripes were supposed to be inside the wide stripes as they'd done (correctly) months ago on the hood!
I called the next morning and was told to bring the car back in "for them to inspect."
Tuesday morning I arrived and the guy who does nothing more than check you in when you arrived walked around the back and I saw him shaking his head.
"Have you ever seen this?" I asked.
He replied that no, this was a new one.
By the time I was fully checked in, every one of the service advisors had taken a gander and they were—to use a perfect word the Brits have for situations like this—gobsmacked.
And oh yeah…when they'd sent the car out to be washed, it came back without the antenna. (They normally put it somewhere in the car, but it was nowhere to be found.)
So my advisor said they'd take care of it all and put me in another loaner.
The car was ready for pickup yesterday, so at lunch I drove down to retrieve ol' Rabbit.
The stripes were correct (braise the baby cheebus!), but the antenna—that the service advisor said had been replaced before sending it out to be washed—was missing!
To their credit, they walked over to the parts department and returned with another brand new stubby antenna like had been on the car prior to this fiasco and screwed it in.
Apparently both the car wash and the vinyl shops are not a direct part of this MINI dealership; they're entities under the umbrella of the parent corporation and this was not the first time antennas had gone missing…
So after more than a week for a task that should've taken a day, Rabbit has his rear strips. Was it worth it? Do they bring me joy? I may not go that far, but I am quite pleased with the final product.