The car bumper repair industry, particularly the smart repair side of it, is a booming business. Car bumper damage is by far the most common car body repair carried out in the UK. This article will briefly explore the history of bumper repair and a brief guide to smart repair, focused on mobile car body repair vs. a static site repair.
My first personal experience of the car body repair industry was in 1995 when I was a passenger driven in a brand new Ford Fiesta going for lunch at the McDonald's Drive Thru. On the way through the driver, who shall not be named, drove too close to the large, decorative rockery that McDonalds had placed near the entrance to add that "classy" feel to the restaurant. The hideous scraping sounds were matched perfectly by the look of sickening horror on the young female driver's face. An inspection of the damage showed a foot long scuff with a couple of deep gouges down the side of the front bumper on the passenger side. I tried to calm her down and told her not to worry, my 'expert' knowledge of car body repairs told me that it wasn't that bad and she could probably get it fixed for 瞿50 and never have to tell her father what she had done three days after passing her driving test.
One trip to the Ford main dealer later and we were both reeling from the 瞿400 estimate for a new bumper (plus the VAT of course, and a four day time frame). "Can you not just repair the scrape?" I had asked naively. "Cheaper to replace it..." was the blas矇 answer. In 1995, S.M.A.R.T repair was only just getting off the ground in the USA and wouldn't really hit the UK for another five years. Expensive lesson learnt, we both moved on (sorry Christine).
At some point in the early 1990s, a technique called Small to Medium Area Repair Technology (SMART) repair was developed in the USA. The exact origins are unclear but the technology and ideas behind it were enough of a paradigm shift in the car body repair industry that the technique spread very rapidly throughout the US and the rest of the world. Car body shops had been able to repair rather than replace parts for many years already but the advent of these new tools and techniques and the ability to provide the repairs without a static spray booth meant that a whole massive new mobile industry sprang up.
Traditional car body repair shops have been, and still are, constrained to charging high prices for a bumper repair. There is little difference in the cost of the repair to the body shop if they repair a bumper corner or repair a whole bumper. The base cost must always include a premium for the fixed overhead costs they are stuck with: rent on the premises, business rates, fixed minimum staffing levels, huge equipment costs for spray booths etc...
In contrast, a mobile smart repair technician can operate all his equipment from a single mobile workshop, often a medium sized van, and so the base cost of repair is generally only constrained to the travelling time to and from a repair job. The end result is a cost to the customer that is usually 50% lower for a bumper repair that is every bit as good (and often better) than a car body shop repair.
For more information on SMART Repair techniques and bumper repair please look through my other articles.
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