crash accident - rear-ended in my prime yesterday

Hey OP (@nanobozho), this is a good point. This is called diminished value, and you should ask for it from the city's insurer. Typically, it involves proving loss of value (which can be a bit of a tricky proposition); others have simply gotten the car appraised at carmax and asked for the difference between that and the tradein price of a similar car. There are diminished value reports that you can purchase, but I'm not sure how effective they are. Someone local used a local guy who does evaluations (you bring the car to him and he inspects it and takes it for a test drive to give you an amount. I'd have to dig a bit for the information, so PM me if you'd like it.

 

1981, i.e. back when the U.S. had a 5 mph bumper standard to avoid repairs for very low speed impacts, e.g. in parking lots.

Then Reagan was elected, and his Administration rolled back that standard ...

The U.S. switchover from Imperial to Metric measurements was aborted at the same time, in the same way.

 

Our metric conversion was "awkward", for the most part just lip-service. It's a good system, but the partial adoption can be maddening. Engineering offices in particular devote an insane amount of time to trivial and error-prone conversions, oncly to have fabrication shops sometimes convert the whole thing back to feet and inches for their shop drawings, lol.

I don't quite understand though: our '81 Civic had the hydraulically mounted steel bumpers with heavy, black rubber facing, but from there on, through the eighties and into the early nineties, we had three or four more Hondas, and they all had fairing-style, plastic "bumpers", mounted with a few location bolts and a lot of screws and plastic clips. One in particular we had a low speed tap and it completely dislodged at a wheel well.

 

My Canadian 1979 Dodge Omni 024 had a steel bumper mounted behind the plastic exterior. I had a low speed front tap and had to replace the fiberglass piece behind the bumper that mounted the headlights.

(not my car)

 

Is that color mismatch or the lighting? The rear corners look darker then the side of the car.

 

Nope, doesn't match. I know the cheap method is preferred to paint the bumper off the car in a room by itself and then attach onto the car. I always refuse that. I want it painted on the car to the right colour and faded/blended into the existing paint. A 2017 made in 2016 has a good amount of colour change in the paint on the rest of the car already, it just happens, it lightens over time. If you blend it properly, you won't notice.

But that involves painting the bumper on the car. Which involves masking all the no-paint areas (i.e. high labour costs) and then for hybrids and EV's removing the battery so that the entire vehicle can be baked at high temp without degradation (i.e. high labour costs).

There is the standard/cheap way and the pain-in-a$$-customer-that-wants-it-factory-perfect way.

 

Doesn't look particularly good from the picture given (hard to tell, especially subtle differences). I'd ask for a repaint if it really looks that different.

I personally disagree with 2k1Toaster because I really would prefer the body shop limit the work they do to the plastic pieces on the car - this goes double for the rear quarter panel which is probably the most expensive part on any car to get fixed. Note that what parts get fixed/worked on sometimes ends up on vehicle history reports and work on the rear quarter panels probably gets you more devaluation than a (relatively) simple bumper cover replacement (because it suggests much more severe damage).

When I had to get a front bumper piece repainted multiple body shops did emphasize that the color on plastic pieces often look different than the same color on metal. The final job ended up matching well even under direct sunlight.

 

It does look a little "off." Good luck trying to get them to redo it.

 

Looks pretty bad to me. I think I'd want them to try again, especially since they offered to. But, even though feathering would be best, as pointed out, that's a lot more work with more opportunities to break something. Can't they test paint some scrap plastic, let it dry, and compare before doing the bumper cover? That probably won't be perfect, but it'll help them get closer without wasting too much time.

 

That looks like they painted the bumper, right up to the seam, with solid color, then stopped. Which is not good, guaranteed to create an obvious color junction. The way to do it is to paint solid color for the whole repair area, then thin it (say 50%) with clear, spray a little further, think it again, spray a little further, till eventually you're spraying virtually clear.

If the damage area was small, this blending process might have been possible within the confines of the bumper. If in fact what they've done to now is complete repaint of the bumper, solid color all the way to the seam, then the blending will have to be on adjacent panels.

Addendum: Note in the second video, they purposely mis-match the color, and then show how blending in can remedy this. As you walk around a car in any lighting, there will be transitions in hue. Blending the paint is a bit of smoke-and-mirrors: mimicking an actual hue transition.

 

I think the shop used Barcelona Red instead of Hypersonic Red.

 

I'd be surprised if they were willing to go through the multi-coat painting process. Just about every shop I spoke to said they did two-stage paint and called it a day.