"I mentioned last month the night that person or persons unknown biffed my door mirror and dented the panel. It was £175 to fix the mirror itself, and that left the ding. Surely it didn't need a whole new doorskin with all the asscociated painting cost and time in the bodyshop?"

"So I went the "painless dent removal" route, where skilled hands use bent spatula thingies to push and wriggle the dent away from behind."

"A franchise called A1 Dents has a guy local to me, Luis Perez. Most of his work is smoothing the dinged panels of smart cars taken as part-ex for the big dealers, but he'll do a private job too. At first it looked like he couldn't get to my dent because there's a safety reinforcement rail behind it. But the rail has a little hole through which he poked his tools. About 20 minutes and exactly £88.13 later I have a good-as-new MX-5."

"But add that to the mirror and it was an expensive nights damage. I prefer to believe that someone hit it by accident rather than as an act of malice. No point in letting your faith in human nature get damaged along with your car."