Since I bought my A4, approx. 2 months old. I find myself parking way out in parking lots or cheating a little in handicap spots (to avoid door dings). The only problem is, almost every time I come back to the car their is a car right up next to it. It really ticks me off. I think people are attracted to it. Anybody have the same experience?

oh man- I thought I was the only neurotic one out there. I've dropped about five pounds from all the extra walking I've done since I bought my A4. There is a fine art to parking in crowded spaces. Here's a brief syopsis of what goes through my mind when entering a parking lot:
1. Are there any open spaces two miles out, and then park beyond that.
2. If yes, what is the probability of some jackass parking next to me after I leave. (I actually found another car's bumper on my bumper when there were no other cars around, read many open spots!)
3. If no, start looking for spots that meet my A4's standards. For example, never, ever park on the downward slope and have gravity working against you. Also, if at all possible, park on the passenger's side of a car. You know there's a driver but there may not be a passenger. And finally, look at the condition of the car your parking near. A rusted Buick Regal circa 1989 is always a no no.

Have you ever pulled into a spot only to 'feel' too tight, and then pulled out again to look for one more 'comfortable'?

They do it to irritate you... think twice about fudging on your parking space(s). A sure invitation to a key job. I always seek end spots, ideally with the car's passenger side next to me when they park. What, me anal?!?! Parking dings suck.

Yes (he says sheepishly)

If possible, I park far away among the sea of empty parking spaces. If none are available and the cars around me look crappy, I'll be a ^&%$% and park across two spaces, right over the center line. I know some people might think that's rude, but I think it's more rude to slam your door into someone's new car (which I *know* happens all the time).

Just a few days ago though, I had parked like that outside a restaurant. When I came back out, there was a huge Chevy Tahoe parked extremely close to me, across the line in the next parking space over, seemingly just to make a point or annoy me.

I don't know what to do. People don't respect other people's property, and in a society like that, you have to take precautions.

99.5 1.8TQM

because of the time and attention I take to finding the proper berth for my baby. No problem, I'd rather drive alone than get dinged up. A4 does seem much more resistant to dingsa than other "Jap" cars I've driven. My Mazda got a ding when I accidently leaned on it when getting in to the car in the rain. Didn't take much.

I've found the same thing, just like in a movie theater. If there are 75 empty seats, you know someone is going to sit right in front of me. Back to the car parking situation...if my car is real clean and shiny, I usually get less folks parking real close. Maybe it's psychologic, deep down, people know they shouldn't ding a well taken-care of car.

Our parking lot is empty enough that there is a section that the regular people will not get to. My co-workers and I have created the "Ding Free Zone" where we all park next to each other and know that we would never ding each other. The group consists of three A4s, one '95 S4, one M3, and one GTI.

Well, I don't know about parking on two spaces... I think that would just increase your chances of being keyed or some bozo trying to squeeze his car right in next to yours....

<i>Back to the car parking situation...if my car is real clean and shiny, I usually get less folks parking real close. Maybe it's psychological, deep down, people know they shouldn't ding a well taken-care of car.</i>

Not these days. The lack of respect of the property of others today is disgusting. Hell, it's not even just property anymore, even the lack of respect for the lives of others is prevalent, i.e. high school shootings, etc...

What's this world coming to? Almost too scared to leave my house everyday.

Drives spouse crazy as I hunt and hunt for a 'safe' parking place everytime we go somewhere. I always offer to drop her off at the door while I go perform the art of creative parking.

I look for extra big spots on the end of the rows, find parallel spots in the driveways or end of parking lanes, park way out in the very last row. When being ushered into open field parking by an attendant leave plenty of room between the car you park next to and immediately open door on other side and stand there to keep the next guy away from you. In ten years have only suffered one door ding.

I have done the park and re-park thing too. I even get up from the restaurant and go check on my A4. Even the best plans go astray as there are those who ignore the paint stripes and park by proximity. They don't feel good unless they are close to the the next car.

I get to work at 6AM so that I can get a 'safe' spot in the parking ramp. Glad to know that there are others like me. I always though that parking lots should have a special area set aside for those that respect their own car as well as others' cars.

ditto on everything said. It usually takes me a while to find a spot I'm comfortable with. At least my girlfriend just laughs.

Recently, I picked up a friend at a Buick/GMC/Ponitac dealership. He was dropping off his car to get some work done. It was Sunday and I pulled up and parked the car, 2 spots from the nearest car, on both sides. I get out and wait for him to fill out paper work, etc. I walk about 50 feet away and just admire my car from behind. 2 minutes later this big GMC truck pulls up and wants to back into a spot. Not only did he pick a spot next to me, he parks pratically pasted against my drivers side. I cringed not to say something. This whole time I was watching to make sure that he wouldn't ding my car. He literally squeezes out, and misses a ding by about an inch, no kidding. Of course there was no car on his passenger side. You should have seen the expression on my face as he was gettting out.

A4's must have a magnet or something.

Ed
99.5 1.8TQMS still dingless after almost 5 months, KNOCK ON WOOD! Redwood, Cedar, whatever!

I got my first (and only) door ding two hours after I washed and waxed my car... some people really just don't give a crap about other people's stuff... I really don't understand how one can be so disrespectful some times... if I see a beautiful, shiny car parked next to me, I"m always extra careful when opening and closing my doors... sigh, and the worst part is the people that usually do the dinging drive a POS and thus wouldn't know the feeling of getting their car dinged...

I am absolutely fanatical about preventing dings. I make it a point never to parallel park. Without fail, the cars on either end are driven by someone who "parks by feel". Also, I've noticed that you're just as likely to get dinged by some old lady in a 740i as in your by a beat up old buick.

my wife got a new job and wanted to take the A4 to work the first day. So we loaded up the kids the night before and headed over to the parking lot. I pointed out the best spots for her to park in order of preference. She thinks I'm nuts, but she really doesn't know what is a good spot.

Like the rest, I am one who parks by studying the parking lot! When I go to the grocery store, they bring out the groceries for you to the car... the grocery boys hate me because they know it's a hike to get to my car! (Ukrops, in VA).
At work, I try to park far and next to a curb as close as I can without touching my tire rim....There, I think! At worst I open up my car to a ding on only once side since noone can park on the curb (there is a tree!). Otherwise, like the rest, I try to find a spot away and at work especially I study those who drive alone and never take their cars to lunch so when I park next to a car I'll take the spot next to them on their passenger side!
And then there are malls! The forbidden place for my car... When I have to go I park far and we mean far enough to make you think "I should have walked from home!" and also always try to park under a light so noone tries to do a key job on me just for parking far

You are not alone! We are all searching for that safe spot for our baby!
Dimitri

===
99.5 1.8TQMS (APRless, dingless (for 10k miles), but there are stone chips :( )

It's like he looks for my car first before going anywhere else!

birds love them...plop, plop, plop

I always go for the small 4-doors - doors open shorter. Of course, the passenger side if possible. Some minivans are not too bad either - the front doors swing forward without opening too far, and the rear door slides back. Of course, other nice sports cars are a good choice.

Absolutely stay away from 2-door coupes like Thunderbirds, Accords, etc. with backseats. The doors on these cars open wide too easily and you are just asking for trouble.

Also, always park on flat ground when it is less liklely that gravity will pull an opening door into you.

Finally, all these rules are ultra-important Mon-Fri around lunch time and Friday evenings. This is the time you are most likely to get a full carload of carpooling lunch/working types.

APRless? Does that mean your going to get one or that you had one and not anymore?

-

Sorry but you just lost my respect and a whole lot of other people's, I'm sure. I'm as anal about finding a good parking spot as anybody else. I'd rather walk all the way to the end of a huge parking lot every time. It also urks me that people today have so little respect for each other's property that they'll ding or bang or knock your car without thinking twice.

And yet taking up two spots it's just as bad. If your car gets dinged when you do that it's your own fault.

Otherwise I'll park among the empty spaces. I know a lot of people don't like it but the way I see it, this country being the way it is, I'm protecting my property. Large SUVs hardly even fit in one parking space anyway, and definitely not when their doors are open.

Where I live it's not uncommon to see nice cars parked across two spaces, even if they're far away from other cars. I'm sorry if I lost your respect, but I have no respect for people who damage other people's property. And in the case of cars and parking lots, that's the majority. :(

99.5 1.8TQM

I bought a VW GTi new in 1991. I had the car for only 10 days before I had two huge dings on the left side of the car. I paid to have them removed at great expense (my insurance deductible would have just covered it so it was pointless).

A few weeks later I was sitting inside the car in a parking space when a woman pulls up next to me with her 4-6 year old in the back. She's standing up the curb, beckoning him to hurry up. He lets the door FLY open (strong kid) and WHAM. I have a huge ding on the side of the car. The woman purposely does not make eye contact as I get out of the car to inspect the damage. As I turn around to confront her she starts to walk away and ignores me as I call after her. I ran up to her and told her that I realize it was an accident but her son just put a huge dent in my car. She continues walking and denies it. I kept talking to her as she kept walking. The conversation went on for a few minutes and she only stopped walking when I threatened to call the police. Regardless, she was completely indifferent about the whole thing, telling me, "that's what insurance is for" and "it's going to get banged up anyway" and "I'm a nut case for making a big deal over nothing" and "I'm teaching her son a bad lesson" (imagine that one). I was calm and never raised my voice the whole time. After about 10 minutes I just walked away. I came so close to keying her car but: 1) I didn't want to stoop to her level and 2) her car looked like she could care less anyway.

If everybody thought the way we do, we wouldn't have this problem in the first place. GODS! It makes me so angry.

I remember going to a local mall a few years ago when the new C-class Mercedes came out. One guy had parked across two parking spaces. It was particularly gauling because ANY parking spots at that place are rather scarce. When I came out of the mall, there were two mall security trucks around his car and the apparent owner was screaming his head off. All four of his tires were flat and slashed and somebody had keyed his car deeply on both sides. All I could think of was, "You jerk, no wonder!"

I guess the point I'm trying to make is this could happen to you too. Be careful.

...when the punishment for protecting your property is ~$1,000 worth of damage. I feel sorry for your GTi and for the C-class. I also feel sorry for the people not being able to utilize that extra parking space that day, but not as sorry.

Thanks for your story though, I'll try even harder not to resort to double-space parking. Why can't they just make the damn parking spaces wider? That would solve it. They could have extra-wide spots for people who care about their cars, and they could meter them at a couple of dollars an hour for the extra space. I'd pay in a heart beat. Maybe I'll start my own parking garage with extra wide spots...

AAHHHGGG!! How could you keep so calm? I would've needed a sedative and a roll of duct tape to keep my voice down. It's also good that you resisted revenge (although, it seems like the right thing to do at the time).

A guy was parked across two spaces and someone keyed the back of his car. He was yelling and screaming at a local police officer who tried very hard so calm the guy down. Finally after more than enough time of this guy being obnoxious the police officer looks at one side of the car then the other, walks back to the guy and says "you sure are lucky". The guy goes off screaming what do you mean lucky, look at my car. The police officer says "yea but at least no one parked next to you and dented you car!".

Yep, we got openings.
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Okay. I was REAL young, and niave. Needless to say, here's an example of BAD karma.

I saw a car, beat up at that, that parked not just across the stripe, but IN two spots almost perpendicular to them! I was so pissed off because it was the only one available within 500 yards of where I needed to be. Anyway, I was so mad I tried to key the damn thing, and wouldn't you know it, I snapped my key in half. You guessed it, it was my car key, and I was FAR from home. I had to go to a hotel for the night.

sheesh.

And my car got broken into too.

And my car was a (gulp) LeCar. (I was 16)

So the morale of the story is, stay calm, everyone eventually gets what they deserve.

When I first go into this college in early September, the first day was a complete headache because everyone (old or new students) are trying to found a parking spot. The first day's Business Management class was 5 mins late, pretty sorry as a new student.
The next day my Economics professor told us "we have 1600 students with 400 parking spots, excludes staffs who don't have privileged parking spots". Wow...that number is unbelieveable.
One time I parked my car in between a Ford Windstar and Chevrolet Silverado long box 2500 4*4, I have no choice because its just few minutes before class starts. I just praying my car doesn't have any damage when those people open their damn truck or minivan doors and "bang" into my car. Its a really unconcertrate class, indeed! :<
The parking lot is like from 8 am to 7 pm classes there are hundreds of cars bumper-to-bumper going around finding a parking space. Very horrible! :<
Next day I went to a supermarket to get some foods. There was a last generation Civic CX hatchback with a soccer mom and 2 daughters. One of the daughter opened the long hatchback door and "bang" into my A4. I quickly stopped me and asked her about "insurance paper, driver's licence, address and phone number in order to contact you after I go to the body shop". She was denying and said "your car parked too close to mine". I responded "I have to parked beside a jerks like you because I have a choice".
Sometimes I would rather parallel parking in 5-6 blocks away from my school than parks besides those trucks/SUVs/minivans/long door coupes instead of giving problem to myself. In supermarket I have no choice because there are no parallel parking spaces over at the back.
Every time I picked up my car after school or anything else, I wil definitely inspect my whole car thoroughtly if I can't found a proper parking spot (like at the corner with no cars beside or corners space with luxury cars beside me).
Maybe I need to drive a Toyota Corolla VE to school in order to avoid dings on my cars!
Tom
97 A4 1.8TQMS
99 JETTA IV GLS 2.0
00 NEW BEETLE GLS 2.0 (ON ORDER)

She's all ready to get out of the car and I throw it in reverse and say, "Uh, no" and back out. hahahahahaha! I crack-up just thinking about it.

I always park in an end spot or far away and so far so good. My 99.5 2.8 Avant is about 2 mos. old and I have had good luck w/ no one parking near me.

My wife complains a lot but I offer to drop her off and pick her up. This is really driving me crazy because I find myself thinking about it a lot and looking out the window at work, etc. I think the end spaces are best, you can park the drivers side as close as possible to the curb or over into the "cross-hatched" section, that way your passenger side is pretty far from the line. I have found that people respect that and don't park over the line.

Last night I dreamt some guy backed up over the curb and into the front of my car and trashed it! Boy, I was glad that was a dream. I am obviously going nuts!

Does everyone feel that parking far away is an invitation to be keyed? I dislike people who park across 2 spaces but I would never touch their cars, being keyed is a high price to pay for being an obnoxious jerk. Is this a regional thing? Just wondering.

99.5 2.8 Avant qmss

In college I did it a few times out of frustration. I'm sitting in a FULL parking lot and I can't park my car because some selfish ******* want's to "protect" his car at my (and everyone else's) expense. Sorry, but f*** that. I don't feel sorry about it either. I also keyed a car once when I was sitting on campus waiting for a ride to pick me up. I'm sitting on a bench and I see this guy parallel park in a handicap space, put a handicap tag on his rearview mirror get out, looks suspiciously about, then walks off. No cane, no wheel chair.. as able bodied as one can be. I keyed his Integra without hesitation. There was this BMW that did the same thing that I think belonged to a foot ball player that did the same thing (always parked in the same spot next to a dormatory), but I never had a good opportunity to key it as it was in a busy spot.

With that all said, I'm as paranoid as any when it comes to parking and I'll park and repark many times if I'm not completely comfortable with the spot, but I will not under any circumstances park in 2 spaces.

You keyed someone's car just because a parking lot was freaking full? So, you had to walk a bit farther, for that, you seriously damaged another person's property? That is a captital offense in my book. I have never parked in two spaces, and while I dislike those who do, I would never damage their property. You should be ashamed of yourself. Oh, I forget, there is no such thing as shame in this country.

After 18 months of parking my 97 2.8QM in the outer reaches of the parking lot at work (Always took the last spot in the row, crowding the outside line as much as possible) I had nary a ding. The one evening, one of my employees came into my office (who also is a car nut) and told me my car had been hit. Turns out a guy who had neck surgery in the morning started to turn down my row suddenly had a sharp pain, lost control of his Ram truck, and customized the front corner of my '4. Ugh. See archive - search for "Bashed" for a pic... Now, six months and 2K later, Ive almost forgotten the pain...

I still park out there - amongst the other ding avoidance crew, but now one space in...

Jeff

There were ABSOLUTELY no more spots. As I said before, I'm not above parking out in BFE and I do it frequently. And do you also defend the people parking in handicap spaces? And as far as me being "being ashamed of myself", the way I see things, they had it coming. Cause --> effect. I'm ashamed of a lot of things I've done, but this just isn't one of them.

your actions are criminal, destructive, and childish. You should be ashamed of your actions. Like I said, you couldn't park, so you damaged someone's property to the tune of thousands of dollars? Even given your twisted sense of "justice", is that fair? What other types of punishment do you summarily meet out to other law breakers? Or do you only act when no one will catch you?

cable/wire cutters in the glove box (mine are always handy), but not for use on someone who parks across spaces. Mine are reserved for BOTH valve stems on the side of the car whose owner so graciously allowed my car to halt the outward travel of his/her car door. I know where they'll be for the next few hours (no-one carries TWO spares), anyway, and I feel good knowing that I'm broadening their enjoyment of the parking space for which they were soooo willing to sacrifice (my paint, my bodywork). Just trying to help.

Another option - HOOD POLKA!!!

.

...try driving/parking/manoeuvering in Europe--perhaps in downtown Rome. It's an eye opening experience. Of course when the guy on the left is driving a Fiat Punto and the guy on the right is driving a Fiat 500 and you're in a VW Golf, the biggest car around in sight... :)