About what it would have looked like when I first saw it, though no tint and no wing.
My wife bought her first new car in 2005, a Nissan Sentra. She drove it off the lot with 6 miles on the odo, mainly from her test drive. It’s the car she had when we met; in fact it was part of our first phone call ever- she had parked it in a friend’s apartment lot and it was gone. Turned out it had been towed, pretty common in Chicago, and very expensive- “a whole lot of money, maybe $1500, to get it back.” She used it to go back and forth from Chicago to Ohio, where she is from. Cars aren’t as useful in Chicago, so it was generally stashed somewhere so she could use it for longer trips. It was reliable and economical, and she loved it. She called it Black Beauty.
We went on dates in this car, and when we worked at the same place for a while she drove it if we weren’t using my VW Fox. One day I was off work, spending the afternoon at a junkyard searching out Fox parts, and she was on her way to work. We worked at a Honda plant, and traffic gets heavy at shift change for miles around. She was in the fast lane passing the main entrance ramp from Marysville, the nearest town to the plant, with plenty of Honda worker residents. Someone merged without looking and just ran her right off the road into the median. She fishtailed but got it under control and back on the road, clipping a pickup’s rear bumper. She pulled over, and other people did too, to help and, soon, to provide eyewitness accounts to the police that the crash wasn’t her fault. She was fine but shaken.
I got there as soon as I could, and helped the cops clean up the median. The bumper cover was mostly intact but not usable. She also lost a headlight and the grille. The bulkhead was a little bent so I put a bungee on the hood just in case. We parked the car at the next exit, and went to Honda to scour the lots for the car that caused everything. No luck, but it helped calm her down.
Henceforth “The Bumperless Beauty.” Take a good look at that bumper beam; it’ll turn up again.
You didn’t have to worry about scraping curbs with the air dam.
She replaced the headlight herself, with her Honda assembly line skills. She drove it that way for about 4 years. When we had a kid she became a stay at home mom, and the Sentra went into full baby-transport mode for a year or two. She’d never been interested in replacing the plastic appearance pieces on the front- “this way people stay away from me.” Then I totaled a deer with my Cruze (see last week’s COAL) and we got her an Element, with me taking the Sentra as my daily. During Covid I ordered a bumper cover and grille online; they were black plastic so I didn’t bother painting them, since they already looked way better than the bare maw. Figure I gained 1 or 2 mpg.
It looked purdy for a few months. Then one night I left work late, in a snowstorm. It wasn’t too bad as I passed Marysville, only spot on the 45-minute commute with hotels, which I had stopped at before during blizzards. I was going about 50 in the 65 zone. Then a squall hit a few miles down the road, and visibility dropped. I slowed down to 35 or so, half my usual cruising speed, basically following the tire tracks of those in front of me. And then the tracks split. For half a second I wasn’t sure which way to go. I slammed into the barrier between the highway and the exit ramp for Plain City. Made a fairly sudden stop. I was fine. The car very definitely was not. I sat in it for a bit in the blowing snow, as traffic went by on both sides of me, a few stopping to make sure I was okay.
I got cited for failure to control. It was totally my fault. I should have stopped, either preemptively in Marysville or along the road when visibility dropped. But I had been at work for 11 hours and had get-home-itis, and thought I was being careful by slowing down so much. Not careful enough. I had just wrecked my sweetie’s first-ever new car, a good, dependable car that had served us both well.
Bumper beams are sturdy, but not invincible.
I ended up getting a Fit, which made us a completely Honda family for the first time, with her Element. It has served faithfully and uneventfully for years. The Sentra was, well, central to our lives for a decade, and while not exciting (not even as playful as the Fit or Cruze), was pleasant enough to drive, and dependable. It was the first car my daughter ever drove (sitting on my lap in an empty parking lot), even before her electric mini Jeep. She doesn’t remember it, but my wife and I always will.
Juice pouch at hand, buckled in; they start driver’s ed earlier every year.
That looks like a substantial hit and not an offset one. Did an airbag deploy? I sold new Nissans of this generation and the only one in any way impressive was the SER Spec-V with the 6-speed. Just like the reintroduced Nissan Z, we had to be judicious in granting test drives in the Spec. I got so I could spot the boy racers at 100 feet. Bitchin’ quick with 175 hp but kind of a wild rabbit.
Dead center, metal and concrete barrier, since I wasn’t sure which tire tracks to follow, highway or exit (and didn’t realize it was an exit.) Metal and concrete barrier, no sand barrels or anything else fancy. Airbag did deploy. It was a decent daily driver, but boring.
I love your approach to car facial repairs. After a deer wiped out the drivers side mirror, I gathered up the pieces from the road and glued the housing back together with a silicone caulk/glue, it dried in a spider web pattern of raised ridges. Then bought some mirror glass at the local hardware store and trimmed it to the asymmetrical shape and silicone caulked it on. It was ugly since the caulk/glue was not metallic silver like the original parts. Solution = rattle can flat black the whole thing. After all, who looks at the color of both of the outside mirrors as the same time?
We replaced the driver’s side mirror at one point. The black plastic was shinier than this bumper cover, so you really couldn’t tell unless you knew. And this looks close enough for me. I worry more about the innards than appearance (and clearly my wife worried about looks even less than I did.)
Mark, glad to read you were ok and I love you’re wife’s approach to the first repair. So nice for the trooper to give you a ticket – it wasn’t enough that you realized your error and totaled the car.
I kinda hoped he wouldn’t, and he was very polite and compassionate, but he said he had to.
I’m old enough to remember when Honda first broke ground out there! My dad was a builder in Columbus/Worthington/ and Dublin. Well he took on a started new community in Sidney, so we drove back and forth many times.
And oh my can those winter events come up fast!
I’m glad you are all good. And I really enjoy reading your things. We live in Tennessee these days, but I still enjoyed my time in Ohio.
Toyota calls that beam a bumper stiffener at least thats what it said on the invoice for used corolla parts I fitted to my daughters car after she ran into the back of a ute, theres remarkably little holding the entire front together on 03=08 Corollas, I was expecting more fasteners, I expect that Nissan was the same,
i dont know what body shops charge in the US but here they really gouge you, my car got hit in the r/r door it cost $3500 to source fit and colour in another door, insurance paid or that door would still be gold, every car is silver now? thats bullshit if youre hunting for a C5 rear door.