Real car crashes aren't like on the telly, are they? On screen there's usually wheelplay, some tyre squealing, a few contorted facial expressions... then a cacophony of shattering glass and scraping metal when the impact happens.
In reality, there's often no warning and the noise is more like somebody's dropped a box of groceries onto the road. THUMP.
At least that's how it was the day DRIVEN's long-term test with the Meteor Grey Ford Ranger Wildtrak biturbo (pictured above in happier times) came to an end; and we'd only just begun.
I was driving the ute at the tail-end of a slow-moving queue of Saturday traffic, no more than 10km/h, when the "other" (bit of insurance lingo for you there) driver approached from behind and for whatever reason obviously didn't clock that we weren't all sailing along at 50km/h. He drove straight into the back of the Ranger and that was that.
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I don't know any more than that, because I never saw or heard it coming. Thankfully nobody was hurt, but it was an object lesson in how the rear of new ladder-frame one-tonne utes are pretty unforgiving to the fronts of 25-year-old hatchbacks. The latter was a pile of steam and dripping fluids and didn't look like coming back to life... ever. The damage to the Ranger looked pretty superficial by comparison: broken bumper, lots of shattered plastic. It drove okay, but who knows?
The other driver was uninsured, so that's a headache for all and a hard lesson for him, probably. As crashes go it had some good points: an ex-police officer was sweeping his driveway right where it happened, so that's not a bad witness to have.
The idea of a long-term test is that you have a more authentic and relatable "ownership" experience with a vehicle. This was certainly that. Assuming everyone's okay, the worst bit about a crash is that you lose the use of your vehicle until it's fixed.
So the insurance paperwork is done, the appropriate phone calls have been made... but our shiny silver Ranger is gone now and that's really inconvenient.
I often get asked whether car companies get mad when test cars get damaged. The truth is it doesn't happen very often at all. But in this instance, Ford New Zealand was brilliant, despite me ruining somebody's Saturday afternoon with that phone call; the main concern was everybody's safety and whether we could all get home okay.
Of course, we're luckier than most. We've lost our Ranger for the time being, but we have other cars to occupy ourselves with. We'll still miss it; we had such plans.
FORD RANGER WILDTRAK BiT
ENGINE: 2.0-litre twin-turbo diesel four-cylinder
POWER: 154kW/500Nm
GEARBOX: 10-speed automatic, part-time 4WD
CONSUMPTION: 8.3l/100km (3P-WLTP)
PRICE: $75,990