Sometimes it is worth acknowledging the cars that live street-parked lives do not have it easy. You know, the ones that get a pitiful shake of your head as you walk by. And today, one such car is this 2014 Mercedes-Benz C63 AMG which certainly has seen better days. (Welcome back to Carspotting! We’re back with The Worst Walking Tour of New York City, headed by my colleague Raphael Orlove, a hack who is barely qualified to tell you how to get to the Empire State Building from here. We’re out to find the best cars of the Big Apple.) So, storytime: last week, when I walked over to my street-parked car, a 2007 Nissan Sentra (my first car, by the way), I noticed that my driver’s side mirror was lying on the ground in pieces, leaving just the mirror’s arm sticking out—a reminder that my car really is a fighter. The culprit of this atrocity left a note with their phone number under my windshield wiper, also adding “window came off,” and to pretty much no surprise from me, the number is “out of service.” I ended up doctoring a Frankenstein-style makeshift mirror out of a replacement mirror insert at an auto parts store and some high-strength duct tape, so don’t worry, I’m not driving around half-blindly like some amateur. That’s right: I’m a master craftswoman. The moral of the story is: I have to respect this C63's owner for continuing to park on the street, just like me, even in the face of adversity and after having been wronged so many times. Their rear bumper is scratched badly and partially pushed in, the front bumper seems to be coming off a little as well as scratched in a few places, and the wheels may have on some caked-on dirt. Living in New York City with a car is far from a cakewalk. Between endless traffic, weekly or bi-weekly street cleaning days, and the risk of some idiot on their phone plowing into your parked car’s mirror, it ain’t easy. Check out the video to hear all of Raph’s theories of who or what may have caused the damage to this German beauty.
