FTO AUSTRALIA

Hi Everyone,

I was on my way home from the City tonite, and at about 10pm when i was cruising on the highway, My bonnet of my car un-hooked from that latch that holds your bonnet clipped down, and it swung back at me at a high speed and force...

Doing a high speed and on the highway, it was pretty shocking and scary, acting on instinct, as i was in the rightside lane i quickly merged past this truck and flew onto the broken down lane.

After getting out of the car to check out what the hell had gone on, i noticed that the latch to hold the bonnet down was slightly rusted and loose (it wobbled a fair bit).

My bonnet had flown back into my wind screen bending/scratching my roof, also totally buckling/bending my bonnet. Other damage was done to the plastic parts of the car wher the wind screen wipers are.

Some pictures of the damaged car can be seen here:
http://www.ozcasemodz.com/uploads/Smash!.zip
** The car is wet in these pictures because it was raining when the car was being toed home. It was not raining then the accident happened!

Car before smash (Mitsubishi FTO GPX):
http://www.ozcasemodz.com/uploads/carpic.jpg

What i ask is that is all this damage covered by my warranty as i find this is neglegance on behalf of my dealer where i bought this car. I had an NRMA inspection done on the car less then 1 month ago and was satuisfied that everything was ok. Should my dealer cover all costs involved if not get all damaged repaired themselves? I'm estimating about $2000-$4000 damage!

I think that my dealer should have had this problem FIXED even before the car was up for sale, doing high speeds on a highway then suddenly having your bonnet thrown at you is extremely dangerous and me and my passanged may have died, i'm lucky that i was able to control the car and pull over...

I ask:
What should i do from here?
Who should i contact?
Does warranty cover this? (I have 3 months mitsubishi warranty and 5 years dealer warranty)

Thanks for all the feedback you can offer

Dare I ask was the bonnet fully closed or just on the first catch?

If you hadn't played with it and it was fully closed at the time, then I would say absolutely. Even with no warranty, if I bought a car and 1 month later that happened, I would be absolutely fuming at the car yard. Talk to your insurance company and see what they say, they may persue the dealer for you.

ALL BONNET HAVE SAFTEY LATCHES!!!

Even if you didnt close the bonnet down all the way it should still hook onto the first safety latch like a car door if you didnt close it all the way.
The saftey latch should be working for a reason. I would take it back to the dealer and show them the damage. Be polite and tell them that they should be replacing for a new bonnet. If they start to get rude then start to tel them that you are reporting this incident to department of fair trading.