Back on the streets – With passed inspection!

First of all – Yes the Piazza is back on the streets again. With a passed inspection and all. Will do a separate post about Japdays 2026 wich was the first big event I attended with the car ”done”. (It’s not done 😉 … )

Photo: @fotohakala

First off was to get the old smashed up light inserts out and replaced with the original head lights for inspection. The car has passed with the quad lights but they didn’t like the bleak lighting from them so better to change to the original head lights before going all LED quad lights.

Thought everything was going to be all good, but turned out I had to solve two small problems. First off, the front blinkers and running lights on the right side in the front magically had changed places. So with the blinker turned on all the time and the running lights doing the blinking – it was’nt gonna pass.
Then the brake lights lived a life of it’s own. Turned on when the car wasn’t braking, and sometimes turned on when the car was shut off!

These two minor fixes took a couple of hours to fix as the workshop had actually installed the blinker/reflex glass upside down! And the brake light problem was fixed by adjusting the brake pedal and the position against the brake light switch!

Went back and, tadaa! Passed inspection!

So what was the results of this idiotic stunt?
– Headlight cover smashed
– Headlight smashed
– Hood heavily damaged
– Front bumper scratched
– Right side fender damaged and pushed back
– Right side door scratched

What follows next is the main reason for this page not being updated in such a long time. I had to fight and discuss with both his and my own insurance company about what to do. They wanted to scrap the car and give me money for it, but to hell with that. No reckless old man is gonna take my pizza away from me.

So a long process of trying to put a price tag on the car started, what are the cost of the parts, how are you gonna find the parts, who is gonna fix it etc.
Eventually after months of dealing with different contacts I got the money I demanded, and was basically told to never contact them again – ”Here, fix it yourself.”

It turned out to be a lot harder than I thought to find a workshop that could do the job for me, even though I did manage to find a new hood and light covers for it. Mainly the reason for it, was that I wanted a full respray and not only the damaged part of it. Why respray a third of the car and let the rest be untouched? My goal was to get the car repainted within a couple of years anyway.

Eventually I found a good workshop with a good resume that could take on the job, and it took quite some time to get it done, but I did not want to stress him out causing him doing a bad job.

The car has been gone so long I actually managed to buy two more cars during this period, a Porsche 924 that I built an offroad project of, and the current Audi TT Quattro that I now work on to get sold. Time to give the Piazza the love it deserves after all this time. It looks great, but I have not yet given it a proper clean and paint protection yet.

Let’s restart – and make a new to-do list

Watch out for new posts soon, we’re gonna get this beauty ready for the summer asap!