I’d normally find somewhere else to park in that case to be safe, even if I had to walk farther, so I guess you’re not wrong.
I’m afraid I have to be a little snide and say that they expect you to be able to drive your car without repeatedly bumping into things, especially something that’s not only hard but also abrasive such as a frozen snowbank.
I’m happy to report that we don’t do this repeatedly. It was three isolated incidents, and as Whitey pointed out, in all three cases the snow banks were frozen solid, not soft. They were also below our line of sight (and we don’t have a backup camera). In my husband’s case, he was pulling forward into a parking spot and thought he had plenty of clearance, only to hear a faint scrunching sound. He had no idea of the extent of the damage to the bumper cover till after he pulled out. We’d only had the car for a couple of months, so after much gnashing of teeth we decided to replace the bumper cover.
I confess that I was not too sympathetic to my husband’s plight back then. Predictably enough, karma paid me a visit this past winter. Same as with my husband, the snow bank was below my line of sight, but just tall enough to catch the front bumper when I pulled in, and then a day or so later, the back bumper when I backed in to my work parking spot. All I heard both times was a faint scrunching sound. But when I got back home, there were cracks on the front bumper cover, and then later on in the back. Henceforth, I was more sympathetic to my husband’s experience.
After that, I made a point of parking what I consider to be too far forward in my parking spot, to keep it from happening again. But at least there’s a wide laneway separating the line of cars parked along the stone wall and the line of cars parked along the building. So my being parked too far out is really a non-issue. But it’s also not my usual practice.
At this late stage, since nothing is falling off, and it’s more of an annoying aesthetic issue, I doubt that we will replace the bumper covers. However, we will keep that in mind when we buy our next car. Thanks for the suggestion!
For half the year, anyway. Those black steel rims are for our winter tires. The rims for our all-season tires are the standard silver ones that came with the car. Color coordination is not such a big deal for us. More robust bumper covers are higher up our list of priorities.
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I’d normally find somewhere else to park in that case to be safe, even if I had to walk farther, so I guess you’re not wrong.
At my workplace, the designated parking for employees is along that stone wall where the snowbank was located. Other parking spots are for customers, and we’re not supposed to use them. I often walk to work, but there are days when the weather makes it preferable to drive. As (bad) luck would have it, I misjudged the snowbank on two of those days.
For my husband, this was a brand-new experience when it happened six years ago. Because of where he grew up, he has lots more experience driving in snow and wintry conditions than I do. And yet it happened to him. In his case, it was at a downtown parking lot in a nearby town, where the snowbank had built up on a sidewalk dividing two sections of angled parking. He pulled into the angled parking spot, thinking (as I did) that he had plenty of clearance from the snowbank, and also not wanting to have the back of the car extending too far out beyond the space. It was only after he pulled out that he discovered the damage done to the front bumper cover.
The only hood ornaments on new cars that I am aware of retract before you drive away, like the Rolls Royce, for instance.
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They also retract in the event of an impact, or if you grab hold of the ornament. At least that’s how the ones on Rolls Royce’s now work.
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I’m surprised it could react that quickly. Edit - that’s what Road & Track says, but I’m still surprised.
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And how are going to determine that ? Parking sensors and backup camera (backup cameras are now mandatory ) which will solve your problem .
We might take up Whitey’s suggestion and see if we can find black, unpainted bumper covers.
Unpainted bumper covers will be no stronger than painted bumper covers.
OK, I’ll step aside and let you and Whitey debate that. I’m sure that, as you mentioned, backup cameras and sensors will help.
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He was referring to paint cracking, not the plastic cracking.
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Ah, OK. I thought there was a link between the paint cracking and the plastic cracking.
I wonder how much it might cost to have a body shop strip the paint from the bumpers you have.
P.S.- If it ends up looking terrible, it wasn’t my idea.
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There’s no real point in doing that, since the plastic is cracked. We might as well replace the bumper covers, but we’ve decided it’s not really worth it, given the age of the car. I was thinking more along the lines of our next car purchase. But, if our next car has parking sensors and/or a backup camera, then those are preventive measures we don’t have with this 2012 Fusion.
every single "older’ car I was getting for my kids received aftermarket backup cameras and ultrasonic sensors mounted on both back and front bumpers, so they beep not only for the frontal/back projections, but for the situations when the side is too close to the nearby cars on the parking lot
ultrasonic sensors are cheap, but proper/good installation is labor-intensive, mostly to get all the wires go neatly
camera retrifits are really easy to do for FYI-er, especially for the license plate frame mounted cameras, having camera monitor to go in the rear-view mirror makes it look “almost OEM”
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my 2012 Camry was backed into by a roll off truck and required replacement of the bumper cover, bumper shocks and radiator support.thje cover was replaced because the center of it was cut by a bracket on the truck but the bumper cover never cracked.
Our 2004 PT Cruiser had a hole punched into it when the ball hitch of a pickup that backed into it punched a hole in it with it’s hitch ball. Bumper cover was repaired, not replaced Never cracked. Both of the bumper covers were fairly soft and flexible.
Sounds to me like the Ford cover is either too thin or too brittle.
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Funny. My kids will be of driving age soon and I will make sure their first cars will have no cameras or proximity sensors. When I take my 14 year old out teaching him to drive I have to take my car and not my wife’s, because it has a backup camera, sensors, and an auto-park system. My kids will learn to drive any car and will not end up befuddled because they don’t know when to stop or to look behind them when backing.
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That’s how I made ours to LEARN driving, yet once I let them go on their own - I added all that “assistive tech”.
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I bought my mother a backup camera and a bluetooth transmitter for her Jetta, but she took it to the dealership and they told her they couldn’t hook it up to the reverse lights for power.
Until I get a car with a backup camera, I will keep backing into parking spaces so I can pull out safely.
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I have a backup camera and I still back into parking places where I can’t do a pull through park . The backup camera really makes that easy to do .
Note about the parking peeve of @VDCdriver - went to the Pharmacy today and parked away from store and did the pull through thing so I could just drive away .There had to be more than 20 empty spaces around me and when I came out the was a large SUV parked right behind me with no room to stand behind my car.
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