After I took the Solstice to the carwash today, I did a walk around to see how it was holding up. Being a low-slung sports car, I figured there might be some chin scrapes from parking blocks. Sure enough, there were, as you can see in the photo. The black spoiler flexes, so it doesn't suffer the minor injuries the chin is exposed to.
And this has been a pet peeve of mine for a long time -- why aren't those darn things a standard height? I know other drivers of sports car have experienced this: pulling up to these buggers, sometimes the chin clears them by an inch or so, where in other instances it's a clearance of millimeters. And obviously, at other times it makes contact -- ouch! In this ultra-standardized world we live in, it baffles me that these parking blocks are not all one agreed-upon height so that the car makers can design their car's chins accordingly.
If you drive a car like this, I advise not pulling up all the way -- obviously the simple solution. But some of the parking lots around L.A. are so small and jammed that you don't have much choice if you want to keep the car's butt out of harm's way...
John DiPietro, Automotive Editor @ 14,308 miles.
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