A few days ago, I backed up my car into a chain post in a parking lot of a job site I was visiting. The chain post originally held one end of a chain that stretched across the driveway to keep people out, it was just around the corner of the building and was grey against the relative grey background of the pavement. And, of course, I just bought this particular car and am not yet completely familiar with its size and shape.

Excuses aside, I backed up into this post that had a heavy steel loop welded to it that smashed through my taillight and dented in my fender. The loop continued to tear into the metal behind the taillight a little, as I stopped.

Once I finished cursing and hitting the steering wheel, I moved the car and surveyed the damage. I could see right away that it would be an expensive repair. But I needed to get the car fixed, so I decided to visit some places on the way home.

The first garage I went to had on the sign in big letters “Collision Repair”. The guy I talked to appeared to be the owner. He walked out and had a look at the car with me and made that half-wincing face people make when they are pretending to be sympathetic about something bad that’s happened to someone else. He then told me he no longer does autobody repair because there’s no money in it. I didn’t bother to ask about the sign. I said, “I really just need a taillight.” He then went into a long speech about the metal behind the light, the dent under that, the scrapes on the bumper, the cost of the right kind of paint, and a few other things that really didn’t matter since he wouldn’t do any of them.
He pointed me in the direction of another place that he said did good work. So, I went there and was greeted by three guys standing outside. They were smoking and dressed in dark-blue overalls, so they looked appropriate.

They came over and looked at my car. They made wincing faces. One started talking about replacing the quarter panel but said that I was lucky because they could repair the damage without costly replacement. He then started talking about needing to take the bumper off, probably disassembling the wheel-well, replacing the plastic clip-strips that hold the bumper on. I pointed out that the car is already four years old and not getting any newer and that what’s important to me is that it works. He said, “Oh, it’ll look perfect if we do it.”
One guy brought me in to make an estimate. He sat at a computer and used special software designed for maximum gouge and told me it would be sixteen hundred dollars. I made a wincing face and said, ok. I asked how long it would take. “Oh, about a week.” ‘What?” “Well, maybe three days. It’s not a one-day job.”
“Why isn’t it a one-day job?” I asked. There were three of them in blue jumpsuits, after all.
“Oh, we’ve got to take the bumper off, pull out the dents, weld the torn metal, patch it up, match the paint.”
“Ok, I guess I have to let you fix it. But I’d like it as soon as possible.”
“Ok,” he said, “We can take it in the week after next.”
“What? You can’t do it now?”

I’d had enough with the whole thing so I thanked him for wasting my time and drove to a auto parts store where I ordered a taillight. It came one day later. I bought a nice new gallon pail of lightweight automotive body filler and a can of classic grey primer. I happen to be a perfectly capable and experienced person, after all. That, plus the fuel of rage and irritation, makes me fairly good at a number of things, including mixing up cake-icing to smear over beat-up metal.

Once I had everything (around 3 pm, yesterday), I used my grinder, drill, hammer, and chisel to beat, pry, and grind everything back to close to where it should be. Then I smoothed out the whole mess with body filler and sanded it. Then I painted it all grey and put the new taillight in. It took three hours, which is considerably less than a week.

I’m sure my repair would not be to everyone’s liking. People like their cars to look pristine but I have better things to waste money on. I also don’t have time to waste giving my car a one-week spa-vacation. I know that such a repair does nothing good for the resale value of the car, but it does make it perfectly legal to drive.

In another five years, the car will be worth nothing anyway. But I’ll still be driving it.