I was sitting in a restaurant this weekend having lunch. I looked out the window at my S, and there was a note on my windshield. I thought it was a parking ticket, so I went out to feed the meter, and then the note said.."I'm sorry....I rear ended your car. Please call..."

So anyway, the person that did it happened to be right there so there was no need to call. I walked around back and sure enough, I had some moderate damage to the bumper. The other driver had accelerated with the parking still on while trying to leave the spot. She said "It didn't move, so I gave it more gas." (you'd think that by babying the car. Parking far away when possible. Pulling forward to maximize clearance when parallel parking....you could avoid something like that.....and then of course something like this comes along.

So anyway, she was nice, and I got her info. She prefers to take care of it without insurance if it's under $1000.

1) Most of it looks like some deep scratches, but part of the license plate well, has been shipped fairly hard, and I can see the black bumper through it. It's the kind of thing where a thimble full of bondo and a new paint job could fix.

2) I can see that one side of the bumper is bulging out where the bumper meets the rear quarterpanel. Bumper also flexes a lot when you pull on the bottoms of it on either side.

3) I noticed that my mufflers tips are no longer centered in their wells, but I am not certain this was her fault. I drove off a curb once (by accident) but did not crack the muffler.


Unfortunately, I don't want a "fixed" less than perfect bumper. Since we are using insurance, I was planning on getting a bodyshop to replace it and then billing her.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how I should handle this? or know how much this will cost? Perhaps this is an opportunity to look into a kit?

Anyone want to buy a bondoed bumper?

 

get a quote from a shop (make sure they give a realistic quote), then get the money from her. i'd prefer to have the money up-front before work begins, they only problem with that is you need a shop to give you a good estimate. make sure there's no unseen damage under the bumper.

once you have the money you can do whatever you want with it

fix it, aftermarket, forget about it and use the money for other things.

be glad she was honest and left you a note!

 

Just the rear bumper cover is $300 and the beam is $160. I would also check the absorbers, which are around $30.

 

If the damage is not near the edge of the bumper cover you might be better off having the damage repaired. This is because, if you replace the bumper cover, you will have to paint the edge off all the adjacent panels (called blending) and then these panels will have to be clear coated. If you can just get away with repairing and repainting the effected area of the bumper and then reclearcoating the bumper, then you won't have to mess with the factory paint on the other panels. It's also cheaper to do it this way, but that wouldn't be my main motivator. I would just not want to have to repaint any more than is absolutely necessary. If you have to get the bumper cover replaced, then she'll probably need to call her insurance company because it could get expensive.

BTW, it's good to know that there are still people out there with character. It's sad to say, but the majority of people that hit a parked car would have just taken off.

 

I'd expect it to cost in excess of $1000. I found my car one evening with the bumper pushed in right behind the left rear wheel and no note on the windshield. It cost around $1200 to replace the bumper cover. Some of that was refinishing the wheel hub (whoever it was misjudged a parallel parking job, I'm guessing, and their front tire rubbed up against the rear wheel before pushing in the bumper). However, it's not cheap replacing body panels on our cars.

Had I received damage above the bumper cover (which is what would have happened had more than just tire hit my car), I'm guessing it could have easily gone above 2k or more in damages. As it was the only damage was a smushed in portion of bumper behind the left wheel and some tire marks on the wheel itself.

 

Can anyone recommenda good bodyshop around Berkeley or Oakland?

 

 

my advice would be to kill whomever did it.. lol
other than that i know shops in so cal.. but your too far away..