You may try your hardest to avoid it, but if you drive your car daily, it will get some form of cosmetic damage eventually. Maybe it’s a ding or a dent, maybe it’s fading paint or heck, maybe you crash your ride into something. How much do you care about cosmetic damage? Does it have you lying awake at night?
My wife’s Scion iQ has become like a pet to her. Sheryl’s given her iQ a name, Ike, and thanks the little car after every successful trip. We think of the little car as an underdog taking on the world. Unfortunately, growing such an attachment to a small car means feeling hurt when the little car takes on damage.
I don’t have pictures of it yet, but Sheryl says she got trapped in a horrible scenario. A semi-trailer ahead of her shredded a tire and she couldn’t react in time to dodge the tire “gator.” The tire shred removed a chunk from the vehicle’s lower left front bumper cover before whipping around and slamming into both right wheels. The vehicle’s right wheels lost their trim rings, which isn’t bad, but the tire also somehow managed to bend one of the steel wheels a little. We were already considering replacing the steelies with alloys, so now we have one more reason to. Thankfully, the overall body escaped damage and the only broken parts under the vehicle appear to be one or two exhaust hanger welds on the pipe. Here’s the sharp little car beforehand, if you’ve never read my pieces on it:
All things considered, it’s all very minor, very repairable damage. Still, Sheryl feels so sad because her Ike got hurt. She also hates looking at that chunk missing from the bumper because it’s a reminder that she couldn’t dodge the tire. Despite that, Sheryl tends to care less about body damage than I do.
I buy crap cars, but trust me, I do care about cosmetics!
I consider myself to be pretty loose when it comes to cosmetics. I don’t care too much about scratches, dents, dings, or other damage so long as it’s not severe. My Volkswagen Phaeton has a little dent near the right rear wheel well (above). I can live with that or have it fixed.
What I can’t deal with is when body parts are entirely wrong colors, when there are giant rust holes, colossal dents, or just general carnage. Yes, those of you who have read my work long enough will point out that I bought the multi-colored Volkswagen Passat W8. Yeah, I thought making it all one color again was going to be easy. It was not.
I won’t even buy a vehicle for the Gambler 500 if it’s been beaten too far for my liking, which some might call insane. I’ll make exceptions for rust for Gambler vehicles, but I’m not going to park a car at my apartment that has three different colors of doors or whatever.
Yet, Sheryl will happily drive around a car that has body damage so long as she didn’t cause it. Her HHR had a messed-up maw and her Oldsmobile LSS shed paint in giant sheets. Yet, she loved those vehicles.
So, what about you? How much do you care about that dent on your car’s door? Did you get good sleep last night?
I can’t handle any of it. I just got a tiny door ding on my right rear door and on the opposite side a ding on the c-pillar from a fallen branch. Went out and bought one of those glue gun dent puller things and going to try my hand at it.
My B6 Passat wagon got rear ended but only hard enough to craze the paint on the bumper. It went in the shop to get that repainted AND got 2 small rust spots repaired which were forming on the tailgate and on the front wheel well at the same time. That car also got swiped by someone making too shallow of a corner while navigating a parking lot. Ripped my turn signal out and scraped my bumper. It immediately went in to get repainted.
Same story when my wife had the GTI, some doofus pulled into the parking spot next to her and gashed the F out of her door and body panel and took a chunk out of the wheel. It had to get fixed right away.
After my own heart.
If I’m exposed to potential rust, it bothers me a lot and I need to fix it pronto. But dents and scuffs get put on the “eventually” list. I defeinitely WANT my car to be spotless eventually, but I have to prioritize other things, so I just let my car’s age show until I have the time to learn PDR or the money to pay someone to do it.
I suspect but can’t prove that someone in management keyed my car last year. They started on the driver side fender, hit the hood, headlight, grill, hood again, grill again, right headlight, right fender (aka every panel in front of the A pillar).
I care more about the fact that I think someone in management did it than the fact that it was done. It looks like shit, but I don’t have >$2k to spend to wrap or repaint it.
tldr; apparently I’m an asshole
not familiar with that management’s leadership style.
NOW are you inspired??
I kinda don’t. I haven’t cared about the paint since I took my car through a car wash and learned why Chrysler’s cheap black paint sucks.
The actual panels though? Kinda. My front bumper has a nice big crack on it that used to cover some wiring on it. It survived the winter just fine, but I need to get it taken care of at some point. Probably will start putting money to the side once I’m done paying off the car (3 more months to go IIRC!).
The older I’ve gotten, the more the blemishes bother me, but the less I’m interested in spending a bunch of time washing, polishing, and detailing my vehicles.
I can accept various levels, but I generally try to preserve whatever finish a car has to keep it from getting worse.
My brand new truck I paid way too much money for? Spotless.
My 38 year old, 314k mile German battle tank with failing clearcoat everywhere? I keep it clean but the paint is dead last on the “fix it” list.
This, of course, drives my spouse crazy, since I enjoy driving the vintage car whenever possible instead of the “clean” cars.
I can deal with very small dents or paint chips, things cause my hail, or rocks, or just some wear in the paint on a small area. Absolutely not anything more than that though.
I hit a deer in December and it took until February to get it repaired and I legitimately didn’t want to drive my car during that time because it made me so sad, and embarrassed.
It really depends on how nice the car was when I got it.
Someone rear-ended my ’00 Dakota? I was only annoyed because I was on the way to my brother’s graduation. Pulled the bumper back straight, still got an insurance payout, never thought about it again.
Overloaded oil/stereo shelf that ripped out of the garage wall, falling on my Saabaru? Mostly cared about the EPA superfund site that was the garage floor, since the rear quarter already had a massive dent in it, and it was a $1200 car.
My friend backed her Element into the door of my Prius in the driveway? I was mostly worried about her car, since it cost over twice as much and was in much better condition. I forget the Prius is even damaged sometimes, since the color hides the slightly crinkled outer panel, unless you really look.
Collision shop fixes my ’17 Forte5 SX, the newest and most expensive car I’ve ever owned, and the hood is off alignment a few mm and the paint isn’t perfect? I sent it back twice. They probably wished it had just been totaled.
Small dents don’t bother me but also paintless dent removal is a godsent. However, I’m also the guy that wants to do a respray on the front of his vehicle because the clearcoat is coming off the driver’s side fender of his 19 year old car.
Zero. Cosmetic damage bothers me zero amount. Function all the way for me!
I really enjoy the freedom of allowing the kids to freely climb, write with chalk on, and generally abuse my cars. Love not caring a whit about it. Keeps me from really ever wanting to get a new or newish car, honestly.
1 Function
2 Fit
3 Form
Those are my priorities as well.
I can get used to it over time. I’ve made insurance claims on cosmetic damage before if I want to preserve the vehicle’s value. The DD I had before my current car was 15 years old and already had plenty of battle damage when I got it, so I didn’t care. Not my damage!
i try not to wash my car because of how it used to make me feel.
owners wash their cars in the expectation of reveling in it’s pristine beauty, but instead sink into despair because all of the imperfections previously concealed by dirt now stand out. that said, i am resigned to the scrapes and dings and do not get upset. hey, they painted the steel at the factory to weatherproof it, the fact it looks nice is a collateral benefit.
Totally depends on the condition when I got it. If I got it looking pristine, then I try hard to keep it that way. On the other hand, when I had a crappy old accord with faded paint and missing door trim, I couldn’t have cared less. I ended up spray painting a lot of it to prevent rust and by the time I sold it there were probably 5 different colors going and I thought it was hilarious. Likewise my old Miata that had faded paint and such I didn’t really care, but the one I’ll have in about a month I’ll care a lot because I’m buying it in good shape
Every time I see the damage, I die a little inside.
Cosmetic damage is a bummer on a newer car, but after a while is a non issue. Holes and other structural/functional damage would be an issue. I’d actually prefer to get a car with some minor damage, and a discount, since not having to care about cosmetics is a luxury feature as far as I’m concerned. Pulling into the garage too close to the band saw and having it fall on the hood, and just being able to laugh about it (old XJ) is a nice feature.
That’s it. It stings when the vehicle is newish, then you slowly accept damage as a possibility from driving it at all. Looking around at stoplights, it seems like nobody’s vehicle is nice anymore! I mean the brand-new C8 or the random exotic are pristine, but daily drivers are all dinged up. If they don’t care, I shouldn’t… probably because they’ll clip me anyway!
Cars are lasting longer, people are keeping them longer so that’s no surprise.
Glad I’m not the only one who thanks their car for successfully getting back home from a road trip. Of course, it’s more an accomplishment for my vehicles than most people’s.
When some cows got loose at my Dad’s house, he used his square-body Blazer to nudge them back through the hole in the fence they came through. One of the cows left a good size dent on the left front fender, and he was so proud of the dent! Years later the paint was fading and he had it repainted. But he specifically told the body shop to leave the dent! He loved it!
None of it really bothers me too much, a lot like yourself, if the damage doesn’t involve rust holes, something falling off, or so far removed from appearing how it should I’ll probably leave it alone, at least until I’m happy with the car mechanically for a long enough time to warrant fixing the more bothersome things, like the rear bumper on my Tahoe that got bent in the process of the previous owner backing into (and apparently totalling) a Lincoln LS. I’ve had the truck ten years and still haven’t bought a new bumper.
My car has some damage – cracked lower front bumper from a snowbank, big dent in the hatch from a truck driven by someone who probably shouldn’t have been driving a truck – but at the time I didn’t have the cash to fix it and now I’m just so used to it that it’s part of the car forever. I feel bad, but the car is going to be mine forever so it can bear the scars that coincided with a very complicated time in my life.
The first scratch, ding, etc. is the worst. After that, the little things are pretty easy to accept. I got one of those paint pens and I think it generally looks worse than the small scratches, but it can be nice on a larger scratch.
I care more than I wish I did. Got a couple dings in the 4XE during the derecho that hit Houston and I may end up paying to get them PDR’ed. The only vehicle I’ve ever accepted damage on as no big deal was my XJ, because it was a wheeling rig.
Dings and rock chips don’t bother me. Something like a Camry dent or popped out front bumper would have to be fixed though.
Dents and dings I can deal with. Holes are my problem. Big chunks of rust damage, missing pieces of bumpers etc, those I replace or repair. I try to replace with same or near same color, because then I can be done, but if I put a red door on a black car, at minimum its getting rattle canned to a shade of black of some kind, so it at least kinda matches.
Only ever owned used cars. Chips and scratches bother me, but generally not enough to do anything about it.
Me, it kills me. I know it happens, but I hate dents and dings and stuff. i do anything I can to avoid it. Its like a zit on a car, its all I see when there is scratch, or a broken trim panel.
Now with that said, it never gets fixed, its expensive to fix body stuff with paint blending and all of that, so I guess thats why it bothers me, since I know I will never fix it.