Amazing what’ll happen when you weld all the things.

There are nowhere near enough dealership body shops to accomplish this.  Go look at your local auto mall and see how many of those dealers have their own body shop...  Go out into rural areas and its even worse.

Most minor collisions are rear-enders or single car into another object. The headlamps being up higher will be damaged at a lower rate than the same accidents involving sedans, ect with their headlamps closer to the ground.

One of the few good things about the move to crossovers is the increased ride height is taking the very expensive headlights above the damage area in a minor front end collision.

I just went and looked up replacement headlamps for a 2017 K900. Part #921013T420 (LH headlamp HID) lists for $3,749.63. Punch out a pair of those and you’re nearly 25% of the way there.

Nissan Versa Sedan. I still maintain that we could disrupt ISIS by handing over the keys to every one ever made. Their will to live would be gone in 90 days.

Just looked it up for grins - while it can be found discounted to ~$680 online: Composite Assembly - Toyota (81110-02M90) current list price is $1,000.44

You wont get an argument from me on that. What I was getting at is that insurance companies are all about getting the insured back in their car as soon as possible to minimize rental costs. To transport the car to and from the dealer for these kinds of services adds time and cost to the repair.

Jason was onto something here last year...  https://jalopnik.com/headlights-are-too-damn-expensive-but-i-have-a-solution-1794231519

A headlight for a current gen Corolla is a thousand dollars by itself.

Every trip to and from the dealer costs money and takes time which nobody wants to pay for.

The higher end the car is, the higher the threshold generally is. A $120K Mercedes for example can be closer to 80% to total out for example as that leftover 20% is significantly more actual dollars than the percentage on a $20K Accent.

Should have asked him about Hyundai. They provide exactly ZERO collision repair information for their North America models (they do for the rest of the world). Shops repairing Hyundais don’t have manufacturer directives on what they should (and more importantly shouldn’t) do when performing body structure work.

Again, a repo truck driver doesnt give a darn about that.  They’ll “hook it and book it”, dragging a locked-up differential if that’s what it takes to get possession of the vehicle.

Too late to the party to get the recognition it deserves.  Have a star.

Here is the room containing all of the repo truck drivers that care about such things

I’m in the collision repair industry and this is just Elon being Elon. Many shops won’t touch Teslas because they have such an iron-fist lock on parts and unless you are an approved body shop they wont sell you what you need to fix that crashed P90.

Escort ZX2.

This will definitely affect their J.D. Powerhammer ratings.

I’m sad that this is the first thing that popped into my head after I read your comment