I love your column and read it every week.
I have a '07 Toyota Highlander with 120,000 miles on it. I tapped a telephone pole backing out of a friends driveway. That evidently broke the clips and now the bumper wont stay on the front of the vehicle without duct tape. I was rearended while pulling into my driveway and the bumper cracked on one whole corner. I have duct tape holding that together too.
It will cost me a $1000 or more for each bumper to get them
replaced. Should I spend over $2000 and do it or just trade it
in with the two broken bumpers? I don’t plan on trading it in
for a couple years yet. Thanks for your advice. LuLu
Fix it and enjoy it. Check to see if your insurance will cover the damage, minus your deductible, of course. It has many, many miles left if you take care of it.
An idea . . .
My brother had a rather nasty looking rear bumper on his 2008 Highlander . . . different body style, but that’s not the point . . . due to numerous scratches, scrapes, and one crack which was getting rather large
Rather than spending insane amounts of money for a “proper” repair and/or new factory bumper, he went a different route
He found an online company which prepped and painted new aftermarket bumpers and sent them to you.
It cost him less than $200, and I installed it.
It looks 10 times better than before, and nobody knows it’s aftermarket unless you get very close
The car was a real eyesore with the original bashed up bumper, and now it’s back to its original good looks
Glad you liked my column. I didn’t know I wrote one though.
Might as well fix it and enjoy. If you trade, they’ll just deduct for the damage anyway, so you pay one way or another.
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Why didn’t the person who hit you have their insurance fix it?
Have you actually had estimates for the repair because 1000.00 for each one sounds high?
As the owner of an '07 Highlander, I vote fix it. I once traded a car with some damage I thought was minor. A Civic that had a sizable ding in the passenger side door from a shopping cart strike. What I found was that the dealerships used it as an excuse to completely devalue the vehicle. I assume you have shopped around a bit at local body shops. Google rankings and reviews work great for finding a shop that will work with you to do the best job for the money.
My junkyard has tons of them in every color you want.Take 30 minute to remove and install a bumper cover on those.You can get a new unpainted bumper cover for $79 plus $150 to paint it, check this ad.https://www.kijiji.ca/v-auto-body-parts/city-of-toronto/2004-2007-toyota-highlander-rear-bumper-to1100231-5215948904/1344705575?enableSearchNavigationFlag=true
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The last car I traded was four years old. The finish was beautiful, highly polished, no major issues except a little hardly noticeable ding from a deer. Still we argued about a deduction because they said the shop still had to go over everything and there is always something. Yeah I dunno but I guess the important figure is the bottom line but no sense making it easy for them to ding you.
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