[Christien]

The thread about parking got me thinking about an incident the other day. I was backing the 911 out of the garage, and my parents' Trailblazer was in the driveway, in a place where we never leave another vehicle. (they sometimes leave a car here when they fly and we drive them to the airport) I knew it was there, but wasn't watching for it as I started to back out, due to force of habit - I ease the car out of the garage because there's a big bump, then turn around and look for the other car in the driveway. Well, The rear quarter of the 911 made a very slight contact with the front right bumper of the trailblazer. Not enough for me to feel the impact at all - I turned my head around and holy ***** the car's right there! Slam on the brakes, put it in 1st and move ahead a bit before setting the parking brake.

So I get out to look to see if there's any damage. The rubber trim on the 911 had been pushed back about 2 inches, and came off the metal rim piece that holds it on. It buckled and looped out a bit. 30 seconds of pushing and sliding and it was as good as new - absolutely no way to tell anything had happened. Now the trailblazer, on the other hand, had a 6" x 1/2 " scuff on the bumper. I took the buffer and some compound to it and that reduced it to about 4" x 1/4", and it's much less apparent, but it's still there. I showed it to my business partner who spent years in automotive paint, he said to get it back to normal it'd have to be sanded and painted, $4-600.

So the score is 1972 Porsche: 1, 2008 Chevy Trailblazer: 0.

It got me thinking, what's the point of a bumper, if you can't bump anything? Not that that's what we should be aiming for, but isn't that the point of a bumper? So if you bump something, no damage is done? With pretty much any modern car, there's nothing except a big plastic piece, which cracks or scrapes under the slightest impact, and costs a fortune to fix. You would think, with so many more cars (and bad drivers) on the road, that these kinds of things happen more frequently now than they did in the 70s.