Mall? Grocery Store? Anywhere non valet? New owner and constantly paranoid someone will be nice enough to hit their doors on mine...this is the one thing that concerns me...as well as the nice Chicago potholes lol.
Congrats! What did you pick up? I park where ever I find a spot, I don't go out of my way to take up more than one spot or park away from everyone else, I'm a man of the people.
Got a beautiful 2004 360. 1 previous owner with 20k miles. Car is mint. I'm a Porsche guy but ended up selling my Porsche and getting into the F 360. I have always worried about parking lol.
When in exotic I frequent only restaurants that have room up front for it. Decent tip always works like a charm.
I don't drive mine often. Usually to a restaurant, an adult "club", or just cruising around. Whenever upfront parking isn't an option, I park somewhere secluded and apart from other cars. Whenever you drive your exotic, I strongly suggest you give the car in front of you 1.5 car lengths! These cars seem to attract bad "car situations". The other day I had 3 close incidents happen in the span of 5 minutes! Literally. First was a female driver that didn't know how to turn left through a busy street, so she was blocking traffic sort of. Then a minute later a biker decides to ALMOST cross me and then stops. Quite scary. Finally at a 4-way stop this idiotic male driver ignores the stop and decides its his turn to go.
I drive and park my F430 everywhere. In a big lot I park in the back, away from other cars. I always out the car nearly in a single spot so I don't give anyone a reason to do anything stupid. About half the time I return to find spectators, or a car parked next to me. But I figure they went out of their way to park by me, they won't damage the car. If I have to park where it is more crowded I will parallel park only, no door dings that way. Just never try to squeeze into a small spot so you don't have to worry about people "bump parking". I drove 25K miles in my F430 in the last 5 years, parked all over. Never had an issue.
Out of the way occupying ONE space. Parking close to a divider will protect one side and give way at the other. I've had a set of magnetic foam door protectors forever. Couldn't tell you where I got them but they work well, attach to the inner door handle via a strap and only take a moment to "install".
I actually feel the opposite, leaves you a wide open target. As a whole though I generally find people are respectful. I've only had one incident and that was parallel parked on the street someone had keyed my car.
See this is what I worry about the most, some amateur keying my car. Now I don't give anyone a reason but I am paranoid some "special" individual will find it funny to ruin my day. As far as going out to dinner, I always give extra $ to keep my car parked up front...really don't care what they charge as long as it's nowhere near ignorant people. On the other hand a couple months ago we came out of a Chicago steakhouse and found about 10 people gathered around my car and taking pictures with it. The valet guy told me he was watching carefully so the ladies with purses weren't hitting my paint. This was one of the cool moments owning one of these cars.
