Wine, flat tire and false alarm

For our 25th wedding anniversary we had a fantastic olive oil & wine tasting at a small winery called L’ESSENZA di Puglia – a very fitting name. Due to the poor road conditions around here we mostly use our kid’s rental car – but for this trip we took the Morgan of course. 😀

If you ever visit this region, I can only recommend booking a wine tasting here. We especially liked the Tondobianco and Negroamaro but really all wines had an excellent and unique taste – the essence of Apulia for sure.

Fortunately, we had no issues with the Morgan. Monitoring the temp gauge is important and proactively adding the electric fan helps to keep the engine cool – which in turn prevents Vapor Lock. But the rental car had less luck. It suffered a tire puncture due to one of the countless pot-holes. Classic cars usually have a spare tire – the modern DR 4 we have as rental does not. The service number provided by the rental car company was forwarded to a Vodafone mobile number that was no longer in service. The rental station had the airport did not answer the first ten or more call attempts.

Even though we booked a full insurance package via Check24 – this doesn’t help right away as it is yet again a different company. At least they have a good service hotline and told me that I have reach out to the car rental company directly or try the ADAC. The ADAC service request I entered through their app was not answered for more than an hour. Eventually they did call while I was on the phone but before I could switch the line it ended. After many phone calls and even more unsuccessful attempts – I got the information that I need to have this repaired in a garage myself.

With the tools and car-jack I have in the Morgan I took of the tire. That was the easy part. Finding a garage out in the countryside is a bit harder. After some Google maps searches we found SuperGom in Martina Franca – a small city not too far away. This was without a doubt the best experience I had with any garage by far!!! Compared to many other places it was really clean – which was visible the minute you enter the driveway. A mechanic took the wheel out of my hands before I even got it halfway out of the trunk. Language problems we solved with Google translate – which works well if you use short, complete simple sentences.

As the puncture was on the side of the tire – I would have not expected that they even try a repair. But as they understood that this is for a rental car – they did try nonetheless. Unsurprisingly it did not work out – but a fitting replacement was available. Not even 20min later we were good to go again. Hopefully the 140€ I had to pay will be reimbursed by the insurance.

While doing this all of this I got a SMS vibration alarm from my MGB GT that is in my garage back at home. It is a locked garage that I rented. I texted the landlord if he could check this for me and the answer came right away. Turns out that he had to roll the car out a bit to check the garage roof. A false alarm – but good to know that the GPS tracker is functioning as it should.