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Study: Luxury Car Bumpers Cost Owners
Oct 11 2007 by Emily Hansen
10/11/2007
High Repair Costs Standard for Luxury Cars
My mother used to say that spending a little more on a name brand product would save you from having to replace or repair it in the future. That may be true of the classic clothing she was referring to, but apparently it doesn’t hold true for luxury cars.
A report by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety shows why: All 11 luxury sedans tested for the report sustained a minimum of $5,000 bumper damage in low-speed tests, and the worst offender cost nearly $14,000 to repair. Jeez. Who wants to pay upward of $40,000 for a vehicle that will cost them an arm and a leg to insure because its repair costs run so high?
One of the biggest factors in the vehicles’ poor performance was that the bumpers didn’t have adequate reinforcement to avoid damage — even at speeds not much faster than our pace during trendy stroller-fitness classes in the park. IIHS said another factor is that these luxury cars’ bumpers often don’t line up vertically with the squishy bumper part (that’s a technical term) of other cars on the road.
Is there any good news? My sunny, optimistic outlook says there must be: Maybe manufacturers of these cars will bring the results back to the engineering table and make improvements to these cars. Frankly, if I’m going to spend that much money on a car, I’d rather pay a little more up front to know my bumper is reinforced all the way to the corners. Better that than look like a total sucker when my insurance company raises my rates.
You can read the details of this report at IIHS’ website, just make sure you’re armed with a strong pot of coffee before venturing into statistics-ville. It’s well worth a look for anyone shopping for a new car.
User Comments
I must disagree with the last Gentleman’s discussion. It is not impossible to make a bumper system that works, to where the damages are very inexpensive to repair. My small company has already achieved this with a new low cost crash shock technology. The SEM (Solid Ejection Material) Shock technology actually uses the same high pressures that are present in the injection molding process of plastic & elastomer parts. These pressures can range from 2,500 psi up to an incredible 35,000 psi! This means relatively same parts can still deliver very large restraint loads.
We’ve already conducted a number of full sized vehicle crash tests at moderate impact speeds. Some of our test efforts have been uploaded to the YouTube website (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9xPNrIvnLM). A total of 7 impact tests were run on heavy (5,400 lbs) full sized 1989 Chevy pickup. In those 7 tests, no damage was delivered to the test truck, other than the replacement costs of the SEM shocks (less than $100); and this is with impact speeds that ranged from 3.5 mph up to 7.5 mph! Of course these particular of SEM bumper shocks are more for reducing the collision damages than improving vehicle safety, but SEM shock systems can be scaled up and placed in the vehicle frame to give a much more controlled restraint load performance, unlike the current unpredictable buckling behavior, which all of the auto industry currently uses.
As to insurance companies overlooking these high damage costs, that’s a bit of stretch. The insurance companies need to be sure that these damage costs are covered, if, or more accurately when, their customers get involved in a low speed collision. On average we all will have a collision every 7 to 8 years, so a $5,500 repair cost on a particular car model must be amortized over some projected timeframe. If the insurance companies did not amortized these project repair costs, they wouldn’t be making a profit, and like the auto companies, most insurance companies are in the business to turn a profit. Some are not (e.g. USAA).
Just thought you’d like to know about our energy absorbing, crash tested (to 5 mph), portable, spare bumper and hitch step.
It will prevent most low speed collision damage and can be found here-> http://www.superbumper.com
Thanks.
Jeff
Speaking as someone in the automobile industry, your article is a bit unfair and unbalanced when it comes to your assessment of expensive repair bills to the front bumpers of luxury cars.
As a website that is in large part dedicated to safety, it must be clear that repairing bumpers is less expensive than repairing broken bones, or heaven forbid, worse.
The bumpers on luxury cars (I am referring specifically to Mercedes-Benz) are not designed to withstand an impact unscathed. Rather, they are designed to absorb as much of the force of the impact as possible, in order to prevent that force from being absorbed by those people in the passenger compartment of the car.
When a 3,000 to 5,000 pound (or heavier) car or SUV makes impact with another object that is either in motion or stationary, the amount of force that is transfered in this accident is practically mind boggling. This is true regardless of whether the impact occurs at slow speeds. At higher speeds, the forces simply become catastrophic.
As far as raising insurance rates, that is also an illogical fallacy in your article. Insurance companies also realize that repairing the costs of human injuries far outweigh any possible costs that are incurred repairing bumpers. Therefore, if it is clear that these bumpers are preventing injuries (which they are), then any sound insurance company will think twice before raising rates for such a car.
Criticizing bumpers for costing too much to repair is not terribly different from complaining if a bicycle helmet breaks after a bad fall. If the helmet prevented injury in this instance, then it did it’s job regardless of whether it broke.