Our house is at the end of a very short dead-end lane and we have only one neighbour directly next to us (diagram hopefully attached because I'm not sure how else to explain the layout).
We've lived there 8 years, our neighbours have lived there 3 but the previous owners were their parents and they'd visit the house regularly, so are used to parking there. We both own our houses.
In order for our neighbours to park, they have to pass our house/car. For 8 years this hasn't been a problem, we've always made sure to park close to our front door/garage gate and they can pass with no issues. They have 2 cars, we have 1.
During the summer we rent our house out to holidaymakers (we live in France) and have done since we bought the place (we live in it ourselves the rest of the time). This past week we've had guests and we told them to park in our spot and to make sure not to block the neighbours in. Half way through their trip I receive a message from the neighbour saying that our guests had parked "ridiculously" and he ended up scratching his car against the wall surrounding our other neighbours property (green in the diagram) as he was trying to park. I checked our doorbell cameras and the car was parked in the same spot we always park in, bumper right up to the garage gate (so parked even better than we tend to). I told the neighbour that (in a nice way) and he said something about "yes but they have a big car", but we've had plenty of larger cars including tradesmen vans etc in front and it's never caused an issue. The guest genuinely couldn't have parked any closer to our house.
We're going over to the house on Saturday and I'm worried that the neighbour (who has quite a temper) is going to try and get us to pay for the scratch and I'm really not sure what to do/say to him.
Personally, I'm not interested in paying him anything as I think it's his fault. Him and his wife have almost hit our car countless times when they come down the drive as they drive far too fast down the small lane, and we have proof that the car was parked absolutely fine.
Another reason I'm pissed off is because for years we've come home to there being 4 cars in front of their house (totally unnecessary as there's free parking everywhere in the village, the nearest being 50 metres away) whenever they have guests over, which means we either can't physically park in front of our house, nor can we leave if their guests arrive whilst we're home. Essentially, he knew all about the parking situation because he grew up in that house before he bought it and has been regularly taking the piss about it with us and I think this is just another of those times.
So, I don't want to pay him, but I also don't want to fall out with him and his wife. We're amicable, we say hi, we help each other out etc.
What the hell do I say/do if he asks us for money to repair the scratch?