Just experienced a technical \ repair miracle. Am in France for a longer period, and completely dependent on the car (van, doing some building\renovations, transporting materials, bricks, concrete etc etc, and the only tool to move around to buy food in the area).
Friday late afternoon, smashed into a stone that destoyed many 'things' in the lower front, metal work bent here and there, the ac radiator + the cooling radiator smashed (was squashed against the engine), lots of small parts, bumper, cables and tubes bent\cracked ++, lucky it stopped clear of the stearing \ the engine itself etc. Looked (and felt) horrible (should have taken a photo, but wanted to not memorize this :O)
Somehow (with 30 liters of water added during the trip) made it to a local repair shop. They looked at it and shaked their heads, told me they'll have a look at it over the weekend, don't call us, we'll call you... gasp, expecting to be without the car for 2 weeks, + a monster repair \ carhire bill. Nice thing, they drove me to a local carhire.
So got a telephone monday afternoon 16.00, expecting a tale of discovered catastrophies, but... they had got hold of all parts, and car was ready. Impossible...
Everything working, bill was fine, very fine actually compared to the damage, but the big miracle was how fast it got done. And came and picked me up at the carhire when I returned the hire car!
Somewhat unexpected and impressive, the French really can when they want to
