Felice has a right side problem.

And her mirror image twin Monica has a left side problem.

Or so they say. As for me… I don’t need to park that close to the curb. But Felice? She gets right up close and personal. And as a result, every car she’s had…the lower right front bumper is stripped of paint.

Now my car sits outside, and has a shi**y paint job to begin with. I’m all about what’s under the hood, how the car drives, as for how it looks? Eh, it can be imperfect. But behind the wheel, my car drives as well as it did the day I bought it, which is kind of astounding.

Anyway, Felice asked me about getting her bumper repaired. There was just a black stripe at the lower right hand corner of this white car, not even an inch, maybe five or six inches long, I wouldn’t do a thing, and that’s what I told her, that it wasn’t worth touching.

But this wasn’t satisfactory to her, she likes her automobile in tip-top shape.

But then…

We were at her brother’s house high in the hills above Malibu, it’s one of the few structures that survived, and the driveway is a bit wonky, and Felice decided to turn around…

This is an issue between us. If it’s tight, I’ll go back and forth a zillion times. Especially in a rental car, because I don’t know the dimensions that well and if you injure it…

And the garage in Vail is really tight. One day Andy was backing up and his car stopped with a jolt. And then he pulled forward and away.

I didn’t know what to say. He’d just hit the car behind, didn’t he want to check for damage?

So I brought it up quietly and Andy told me no, his car has a feature wherein it automatically stops if it’s going to hit something, that he didn’t run into the car behind us at all.

But I drive a twenty one year old car without this feature. As for a rental car, if it even comes with a manual, good luck figuring it out.

As for Felice’s car…

It will park itself. She got her car off lease. And the person who ordered it originally purchased all the options. My favorite is the bolsters in the seats, which cradle you when you go around corners. And there’s the heads-up display. And the parking ability. And massage…

But Felice turns most of this stuff off. I dig it, I like all the bells and whistles. But they’re not always so easy to figure out. As for the ability to park itself…now that Felice keeps bumping the bumper, she says she’s going to try it out.

Anyway, so she makes one less back and forth than I would when she’s maneuvering to exit her brother’s house and CRUNCH!!

That didn’t sound good. I would have stopped the car and taken a look, but that’s not Felice’s style.

So then when I looked at the bumper thereafter… Now it made sense to fix it. There was a small dent, not quite the size of a baseball, and a bunch of scratches. Who knows what she hit by the side of her brother’s driveway, I assume rocks.

And, as you probably know, all the bumpers today are plastic. As for fixing them… They just rip them off and replace them. Can you even fix a dent in a plastic bumper?

As for plastic bumpers…

Starting in 1974 the U.S. law said that bumpers had to sustain a 5 MPH direct hit, or a 3 MPH corner impact. As a result, these big bumpers were tacked on to automobiles and…it was great, you could hit stuff with impunity.

But the carmakers didn’t like the added cost and weight and the insurers said there was not a concomitant reduction in repair costs, so…they changed the law again, to 2.5 MPH. And we got these new plastic bumpers, which when removed you see are backed up by foam, the kind they use in packaging, and they get scratched and punctured and…

I’m sitting in my office and I get a text. Felice asks me what I think of this:

Home

They’ll come to your house and fix your bumper. Reviews on Yelp are stellar.

Not for me. I’m against independents and fly by night operators. I take my car to the dealer, because they see my model all day long, they can easily diagnose the problems, and they’re going to be there tomorrow and the day after that.

As far as body shops go…

Unlike on the east coast, in L.A. oftentimes the body shop is not owned by the dealer, but they all have their preferred shops. So, this is where I go.

And in truth, body repair is so far superior today compared to yesteryear. Usually, you’d never know the car was in an accident.

As for me… If I’m going to spend my money, I want it done right. Especially on something as expensive as a car. I’ll pay a little more, I don’t want a substandard job.

And that’s what I told Felice to do. Call the dealer, have them steer you to their body shop and get an estimate. Then compare that price to Bumper Buddies.

But Felice was more interested in convenience, after all, Bumper Buddies comes to your house! So she sent in a picture and they gave an estimate and I’m reading it and I say…but they don’t seem to know there’s a dent, it’s not clear in the pic and the estimate doesn’t mention it. So who knows if they can even fix the dent, never mind the cost.

But Felice proceeded. And on Wednesday Bumper Buddies arrived.

I was asleep. But Felice woke me up, she needed guidance.

So I go into the garage…

Yes, there’s a dent. No, they were not aware of it. So, it will cost more to repair it and…

How exactly do they expect to do this?

And the guy says he’s going to go behind, maybe remove the bumper…and now I’m getting all anxious, I mean putting it back together… But he says he may just be able to remove the inner panel.

Also, did we want the paint blended or not? If not, you may be able to see where the repair was made.

Felice wanted to know what she should do.

I said to fix the dent and to blend. I mean if you’re going to do something, do it right. Why do only a half-a**ed job?

So the guy nods and gets to work.

And then it’s two hours later and Felice announces the job is done.

This can’t be, this is impossible. I mean normally when I bring my car in for body repair it sits at least a week. How in the hell can this guy repair the car so fast, must be a shoddy job.

So I go out into the garage… And the job is absolutely perfect. I’m astounded. How in the hell did he do it??

As for the dent… He heated up the plastic.

I mean I’m marveling, this is too much.

Then again, what’s it going to look like tomorrow, two months from now, a year or two down the line.

So as the technician is walking to his van I ask him, how long is the warranty?

THREE YEARS!

Well, that’s pretty good. That guarantees perfection for three years anyway.

But then I’m wondering, why does my car sit in the body shop so long? I mean sometimes they’re waiting for parts, but if this guy could fix Felice’s bumper so fast…do they just pile up the cars to make sure they always have work to do, so the technicians are not idle?

Now this is an expensive car, albeit it not new. I never would have taken the risk.

But it appears I was wrong.