Q&A: Will autumn leaves ruin car's finish?

Q: You know how most people love autumn? I don't. My husband insists that every time a leaf falls we race out and remove it from the car. He is convinced that leaves ruin the finish. Although I'm just as picky as he is about keeping our Lincoln MKZ beautiful, I just don't know if this leaf fear makes any sense. There are trees everywhere. I don't see millions of mottled cars driving around once winter hits. So can you give us the real story?

A: Leaves can be pretty caustic (some are worse than others). They may be riddled with sap, which ups the potential damage quotient. If it rains for hours on leaves plastered to your hood and then the sun comes out to bake all that muck into the finish, that, too, ups the damage potential.

Leaves are not nearly so finish-threatening as bird droppings or tree sap that blops onto your hood and cheerfully prepares to eat away at the finish. But leaves are something of an issue.

Do I race out and remove every leaf that falls on my beloved Acura? Nope. And evidence of that lies in the little under-the-hood crevice that snuggles up next to the windshield: dried- out leaves huddled mournfully until I pop the hood every couple of weeks to whisk them away.

That said, I do pluck them off whenever I go out to start up the car to drive anywhere (sweeping them off with an open hand is a bad idea because that can cause micro scratches.)

I generally do a serious wax job every September to make sure the finish has a little extra protection from falling leaves and the nastiness of winter. But millions of people spend lots more time and money babying their vehicles than I do.

If you're tired of playing pluck-the-leaf all autumn, I might suggest that in the interest of marriage preservation, you consider purchasing one of those fabric car covers that protect the vehicle from all sorts of things and can travel with you, so there's never a moment when the car is vulnerable to nastiness from above.

A good story (and person, and way to live life): So I'm standing in the customer service line at Target to return some sheets, and in ambles a young mom, hot and tired looking, clutching an infant and hauling a 4-year-old by the hand. She stands in line behind me, waits quietly and when I'm walking away I hear her say "I want to report a hit and run."

I halt, wanting to eavesdrop for a second or two. She'd been in the shopping center parking lot loading purchases into the trunk, balancing kids and purse, I imagine, when she heard a crash, looked in that direction, saw a young woman leap from her car, study the other car, and then jump back into her vehicle and race away. The young mom somehow snatched a pen, wrote down the tag number of the fleeing damage-maker and went to examine the damage (which she felt was quite considerable).

When the merchant where she'd purchased the stuff she'd been loading up didn't seem interested in using the store phone to call police (her cell was dead, she mentioned), she walked over to Target, where she knew they had a security guard, she said, and she imagined a little more interest in the situation might get expressed.

I don't know, if course, if the law-breaker got tracked down and brought to justice for doing considerable damage and then leaving the scene. I sure hope so. I figure she wasn't banking on a witness going to the trouble this young mom did to report a crime and help out a stranger whose car had been damaged while minding its own business in a parking lot. I'd like to think all of my friends, all of us, in fact, would go to the same trouble.