It’s sort of amazing to realize just how often I’ve been banging on this drum. I first wrote about this problem way back in 2012, then again in 2018, and, thanks to my hard-earned efforts and the vast respect that the automotive and insurance industries have for me, precisely absolutely nothing, give or take one fuck-all, has been done to change the situation. The truth is just the same as it was back over 12 years ago, which is that modern car bumpers are absolutely useless. They’re incapable of doing the job that they need to do, because they, effectively, do not actually exist.
I’m still bothered by this. It bothers me because I vehemently believe one of the best qualities a machine can have is forgiveness. Small errors made by the person operating the machine should be able to be absorbed with as little damage as possible, that’s what I mean by forgiving. And the current state of modern bumpers is decidedly unforgiving.
Car body repair costs are more punishing than ever, and something as simple as backing into a low wall or bollard or underground parking deck support column or anything like that can result in absurd amounts of damage, needlessly.
Just to give this a bit of focus, let’s pay special attention to rear bumpers, because they tend to be where the most common sort of low-speed impacts occur, precisely the sorts of things that bumpers once steadfastly defended. In the present day, though, for far too many cars, rear bumpers are effectively AWOL, and expensive body parts like entire tailgates are left to be the first point of impact in even a small impact.
My co-founder David Tracy has been noticing this too, and made this very helpful video showing some of the worst offenders of this let’s-sacrifice-the-tailgate-for-no-good-reason way of thinking:
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Look at that! This is absolutely absurd. Let’s just look closer at some of the examples David pointed out, starting with the Ford Mach-E:
The liftgate or hatch or tailgate or whatever you want to call it, is the first thing that will be contacted if you’re hit from the rear or back into something that’s a certain height. It’s also the largest single body panel on the rear of the car, and is expensive to fix and replace. It’s made of metal, not plastic that can deform at least a little bit, like the bumper cover hiding behind it.
It makes no sense. It’s like, if you’re male, protecting yourself from a fall by pushing your balls out in front of you so they take the initial impact. Nobody would do that. And yet Land Rover does this:
On both of these models, Land Rover Discovery and Range Rover Sport, the tailgate extends rearward further than any sort of bumper, which barely exists, anyway. So, in an impact, it’s the tailgate that gets the whack. I included the service costs for the tailgate here, over two grand, but even that is just a tiny part of what an actual repair would cost, even if they just repaired instead of replacing the tailgate. A small dent could easily run into big bucks to repair.
Here’s a very common example, one that’s actually been noted to be a problem before, the Tesla Model Y hatch:
None of these are okay, and we should stop thinking of this as okay, because it’s very much not. If you back into something in a Model Y, your tailgate is is likely what gets hit. And it is not cheap to fix or replace. The punishment does not fit the crime, and it’s all just from bad design.
This is garbage, absolute garbage. I know all of these cars are safer than old cars when it comes to rear-end collisions, and under all that painted metal and plastic are special impact bars and crumple zones that absorb energy, but those only matter in catastrophic conditions. For day-to-day driving life, these are essentially unprotected rear ends.
It wasn’t always like this, of course.
Cars used to have substantial and very forgiving bumper protection, front and rear, and while there were plenty of people who don’t like the look of the battering ram/diving board/whatever bumpers, these things worked. The 5 mph bumper standard, Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard (FMVSS) 215 (later 581) demanded that a car could be driven into a flat wall at 5 mph and suffer no damage to critical systems like lights or fuel fillers or even the horn. Some cosmetic damage was acceptable, but no significant body damage was permitted, hence big, rugged bumpers that extended far from the vulnerable body panels and supplementary thick, beefy bumper guards like these:
Sure, laugh at all that black rubber if you like, but you could whack into a dumpster at a good clip and suffer nothing beyond a little jolt that reminds you to pay attention, dummy. That is what I mean by forgiving.
And if you don’t like the look of those, remember, this could be done in an elegant way with body-integrated bumpers, and I know because carmakers did just that. Look at these two rear bumper solutions:
Back in the 1970s and 1980s, companies as different as Porsche and GM both found ways to meet the strict 5 mph bumper standards and still have body-colored, fully integrated bumper solutions that actually worked. So I don’t want to hear any OEMs pissing and moaning about how modern designs aren’t compatible with strong bumpers, because they absolutely could be.
These 5 mph bumper standards came about from pressures from insurance companies who were sick of having such huge payouts for relatively minor wrecks; when Ronald Reagan became president in 1980, he indulged his love of de-regulation by reducing the bumper standards to 2 mph in 1982 and making the damage restrictions more lenient, as well as opening up possibilities for even more lenient standards in the future.
Also, SUVs and trucks always had lower standards, and maybe that was okay when those types of vehicles were uncommon, but almost everything is an SUV or truck now.
Now we’re in the future, and it sucks.
Insurance companies seem to have just decided, screw it, we’ll just charge more for premiums and everyone will just pay more for repairs than ever before, and if they don’t like it, tough.
We shouldn’t have to accept this. The lack of basic, simple protection from small-scale impacts on modern cars isn’t just absurd, it’s stupid. Sensors and cameras are integrated into bumpers, sacrificed at the smallest meeting of machines, taillights and headlamps are at vehicle corners, vulnerable and nauseatingly expensive to replace, everything requires painting, and the whole thing has become this insipid mess where a minor rear end thump can end up costing forty grand.
Why do we accept this?
Besides, I think SUV design could easily make some big, old-school bumpers work, design-wise! I don’t think any car makers will take this path willingly, but perhaps the car-buying public will finally get sick of having to total a car because someone didn’t see a bench or tree stump until it was too late.
I can dream, at least.
My old Leyland P76 had a very chunky chrome rear bumper that was even more solid than it seemed, since it had a towbar hidden inside it. It also had a 1″ thick rubber bump strip running across its full width. I once got rear-ended by a tailgater in an Alfa, and my bumper and towbar took out his radiator, airconditioning condenser, oil cooler, and power steering cooler. When he backed up my towball nearly tore his radiator clean out of his car – I was able to drive away with zero visible damage, while he was stranded in the middle of a rapidly expanding pool of oils and coolant.
You failed to mention your beloved BMW I3 – it’s rear hatch has a large black glass panel which only the taillights are visible through. A buddy had his wife’s I3 bust mysteriously – and you can’t buy just the glass panel to replace it – have to buy an entire hatch assembly. Even used ones in eBay are $1000+ and shipping is expensive as special crating is required for the two fragile glass panels. The glued on glass panel also seals the hatch – so when I broke water got in the taillights and cargo area as this is in the PNWet…
I did something like this! Or a shady version, anyway. The glass panel broke, so I had to take off the edges and strip the glue that held it on. I (guess we were just putting a new glass panel on, I wasn’t there for that) The whole time I was thinking that this is a stupid design. Oh, also, the hatch had little plastic bumps around the edges, to hold the glass panel in the right place I guess. I tried my best to keep those intact, but some still ended up breaking at the hands of my coworkers. Also also, all the crevices of the hatch filled with glass shards, and you could hear them rattling when moved. We had to blow them out with compressed air.
Preach it
I feel like automakers reached a perfect equilibrium in the 90’s with bumpers (and technology). They were integrated into the design in an attractive way but they were still a distinct part that stuck out enough to be good at protecting from bumps. My BMW E34 has proper bumpers and they look great, along with easily-replaceable plastic rub strips all around. That kind of practicality gets me very excited.
Unfortunately, even if bumpers went back to being useful, they still wouldn’t help, because in so many accidents nowadays, it’s between a vehicle and a taller vehicle. So many cars get rear-ended where it takes out the entire trunk lid while the bumper is entirely unscathed.
“Rubber baby buggy bumpers. Ha! You didn’t know I was going to say that”
“We’re not gonna take it…
NO, we ain’t gonna take it…
We’re not gonna take it, ANYMORE!”
Just love the forgiveness of the Metro’s bumper. Got shoved into a Prius on the freeway. Prius owner claimed my statement was bullshit as there was no damage to the Geo’s rear end. Luckily, a cop rolled up and told us to get the hell off the highway. It was rush hour and there was 10,000 pissed off people behind us.
Another time got bumped in a Mcdonalds drive thru. I didn’t even bother looking. I knew I was good, plus the big macs were ready.
Then there was the car load of drunks at the bar where I just finished delivering a pizza. They pulled up behind me and immediately started yelling: “Don’t you hit our car!” which didn’t make sense as I was going forward. But since they insisted, I reversed course. Oops!
Almost forgot the rude apartment neighbors that liked to stash their trash cans behind my car blocking access to the alley. It was 4 in the morning and I plowed through those pesky receptacles to let everyone know I’m not taking this shit anymore!
The bumper did get a crack though when I blocked my Dad’s driveway and he pushed it out of the way with his Caprice. You just don’t go against the family.
However, an Explorer found the limits and got the corner all messed up but didn’t bend any metal. The driver was sad and said she didn’t need another accident on her record. I wasn’t worried and had spare parts. She insisted I take it to her body shop instead. It didn’t cost her that much and was cheaper in the long run than going through insurance. I made out good as well as insurance probably would’ve scrapped my econobox.
Automotive designer here; I feel the need to point out that the lower half of these hatches is indeed a fascia panel on TOP of the hatch, not the metal hatch surface itself- this example of a salvage mach-e hatch for sale is a good example: https://www.ebay.com/itm/126267120312
The mandate is for that section to be a replaceable/deformable panel on designs where the hatch is “flush” with the bumper fascia. The recent onslaught of half-plastic/half metal hatches can most easily be identified by any vehicle that has a taillight or other trim feature (or even a simple partline) spanning the entire width of the hatch.
Edit: I don’t know how Tesla gets around this – and as a result there are lots of Tesla model X hatches on ebay with dents to the lower band of material.
We need insurance classes like the UK. If I could see that car A would cost me $100/more per month in insurance than car B because of repairability, then I might choose B, which might encourage manufacturers to make cars more resiiient and repairable.
I agree this is a problem with new car designs. In the past, starting from the 1970s up to around the early 2000s, the insurance industry as well as publications like Consumer Reports used to do bumper tests and estimate the amount of damage would be caused by a routine ‘bump’ a car might get to its bumper.
I recall the VW New Beetle of the late 1990s and early 2000s got an excellent rating and some ‘tough looking’ trucks got terrible ratings.
And then the industry, publications like CR and the journalists just seemed to stop caring about cars having decent bumpers.
Now I’m not saying we should go back to the 5mph battering ram bumpers of the 1970s. But I do think we need to get back to testing vehicle bumpers and how much damage can be caused by a 2.5 mile per hour ‘bump’.
I suspect the lack of decent bumpers on modern cars contributes to higher insurance rates.
And the insurance industry as well as government needs to get more serious about modern too-tall trucks and their too-high bumpers and headlights.
Why the bumper standards were watered down in 1982 is probably due to the incompetency of DOT and NHTSA in defining what the bumpers ought to perform and making up their minds what the end result of regulations ought to be. The bumper regulations were updated a several times in short years (1971–1979), adding more complexity, weight, and expense. Not only bumpers that they dithered about but air bags, amber turn signal indicators, halogen headlamps, 85-mph speedometer, and so forth.
As for Porsche 928 along with 911 (G-Modell with accordian side fillers), they might look like they have 5-mph bumpers. Behind the slick covers, the international versions do not have the impact struts as the US and Canadian versions have. The 911 G-Modell has thinner bumper guards for the international markets and chunky ones with struts for the US and Canadian markets.
Fun fact: Cadillac was only one of all GM brands to offer two different bumpers for the domestic and export markets when it introduced its fifth-generation Seville in 1998. The export version has much thinner ones as to put the Seville under five-metre length (some countries tax heavily if the passenger car is longer than five metres).
Hear, hear. I’ve been lucky enough not to have owned anything new enough to suffer this phenomenon, so I know firsthand how awesome real bumpers are. Best example is the impact the rear bumper on my ’91 Escort GT took against a telephone pole at probably 7-8 mph. Hurt my neck a bit, and my pride a lot more, but the (painted, body-colored) bumper took the impact with barely a scratch and left my wallet unscathed.
Even modern bumper damage isn’t cheap. I backed into a pole at lower speeds than that in our ’21 Outback; it required not only a new bumper cover, but a new BSD/RCT radar sensor and mounting bracket. Some of the unibody was damaged in the area but I was able to bend it out of the way of the muffler and then prime/paint it. That damaged meant the radar sensor wouldn’t mount as it normally should, so I spent a couple of hours shaping it to accept the sensor and align the sensor at the correct angle (winged it based on undamaged side.
After all that, IIRC it was around $1300 total; no idea how much it would have cost had it been taken to the dealer for a sensor alignment.
In the age of driving distractions and designed obsolescence, this is but an unfortunate vehicular trait at best.
At worst it’s a purpose built corporate decision.
I’ve been rear ended by distracted drivers three times now in my 98 Ranger.
They bent up the hoods of their cars, I had to adjust my steel bumpers bolts a bit.
I’ll go against the grain – I’m not a fan of anything compromising styling for the purposes of being easier/cheaper in case of an accident.
The 928 and late C3 Corvettes are actually good examples of why deformable bumpers don’t work. When’s the last time you’ve seen one that wasn’t deformed and bleached by the elements? They tend to look cheap, lose their shape, and discolor quickly.
And for the millions who think bumpers are meant to be bumped into “they’re bumpers!!” – your glee at vandalizing other people’s private property is gross.
Of course bumpers are meant to be bumped into. I just don’t understand what that has to do with vandalizing other people’s property.
Bumping into things doesn’t necessarily mean damaging other people’s property, you know. But I can’t say I expected much from Mr. Form Over Function.
Sure, but how often do you bump into your own property?
(Not that I care, though. I skateboard. Damaging other people’s property is a hobby to me.)
All the bumps I’ve ever had have been into my own property!
I love having proper bumpers, because it means that when I accidentally back into the wall of my garage, or bump into the hitch of one of my trailers, it doesn’t leave a mark.
I also like being able to push a non-functional vehicle bumper-to-bumper with no damage.
100% of items I have crashed a car into have been my own property.
Me and my brothers used to bump each other’s cars if we happened to be in traffic together, (a-la Clarkson/Hammond/May), but we can’t do it as much any more, because even a 1 mph push can crack paint and plastic on a modern car.
When we all drove shitboxes it was great fun. You’d get some odd looks from passers-by as you gently bumped the car in front.
Any bump on a modern car will cause at least a scratch. We should all be conscientious of others’ property.
Literally yesterday.
But the more repairable cars are, the fewer new cars we buy!
Do bumpers really matter at all when there is such a difference in vehicle height? I’m pretty sure that If I take a side impact from an F250 while driving my Miata, the A pillar and my head would be the contact points.
It could easily run over the rear of my car (or front, for that matter) before even noticing I was in their way.
Unless there are going to be bumper height standards, discussing the designs of the bumpers that are in no way required to be at compatible heights seems a bit pointless.
Bumpers really do matter when a RAV4 rear ends a RAV4. And that specific scenario I just described probably represents 50% of all car collisions in the US, so don’t pretend it doesn’t matter.
Yes there is variation in bumper height, but probably 70-80% of all vehicles on the road are close enough in height for bumpers to matter. That figure does not need to be 100% before we bother trying to improve anything.
That’s why Ford installed the “blocker beam” underneath the Excursion and SuperDuty trucks as to reduce the incidence of mismatched bumper height leading to extensive damage and injury of the low profile passenger cars.