One of my greatest pleasures from having the Marcos is driving with the hood down. I normally consider myself (& the long-suffering car) fairly tolerant on the weather front… but I got rather moist today! 😳 Having slightly misjudged the intensity of rain when glancing out of the office window before blindly setting off home, heavy traffic (& male pride) meant that I didn’t have the opportunity to put the hood up for about 15 minutes of… this!

A combination of no fuel (again) & standing water in the passenger seat (again) forced me to concede defeat & pull into a petrol station. Curse you, weather Gods!

Now one of the reasons I don’t get hung up on putting the hood up when it’s raining is that it doesn’t actually stop you from getting wet – it just concentrates the water in a few key places. At least, that’s the score in my car. I already knew the new hood had gaps around the leading window edge which let water in when driving, but I wasn’t expecting it to be coming in through the front seal above the windscreen & dripping steadily off the sun visor (yeah… guess how much that gets used in Manchester…) and onto my lap. It’s never happened before so a bit perplexing & subsequent inspection hasn’t revealed anything obviously wrong with the rubber. What it did mean however was a s**tload of water in the car, now being superheated by the 6.2 litre footwarmer with the result that EVERYTHING misted up & I couldn’t see out of the car. The front screen demister didn’t stand a chance! As the traffic inched forward I became terrified of driving into the (unseen) car in front, in the end putting the hazard lights on & pulling off onto a sidestreet until the rain abated somewhat. Not my finest arrival home!

On a cheerier note, since replacing the battery the car has started without any issues so it looks like the Optima was a worthwhile investment.