Saturday, March 19, 2016

Bumper Crop

Last spring, while in Los Angeles for a visit, we were reluctant to use our son's car, which had the check-engine light on. We asked the rental agency for a mid-sized car, the agency offered us a Jeep Cherokee, and we settled on a Prius. While backing up to turn around on a dark street, I backed into the bumper of a parked car, a sports ute of some sort, and discovered how far Toyota had gone in optimizing for a low weight:


The sports ute was not scratched.

Before this visit, our son took his car to the dealership, so we did not expect any reason to rent a car. On Thursday, having picked up the car at his office, we pulled over to the curb about one door down from the place we are staying, and were about to move up, when a sports utility vehicle sideswiped us, at low speed but enough to do damage:


This sports ute was a Toyota, I suppose a Highlander [correction: 4Runner], and in its case Toyota did not optimize for weight. I did not see any damage to the car that struck ours, though admittedly I was distracted. Our son will drop his car at the body shop today, and rent something to drive until it is repaired.


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