Warning.....cars are made out of plastic body parts now!

[MJ5150]

So maybe most of you already know this. I found out the hard way on Sunday. We rented a 2007 Mustang over the weekend when we went to Bentonville.

I was riding with my brother-in-law in his Jeep, and my wife was driving the Mustang with her sister. We stopped at a mini-mart to grab some ice. I decided to sneak up behind my wife as she sat in the car and scare her. I got up to the bumper and I went to stomp on the bumper to make the whole car rock to shock her.

BAD IDEA!!!! The spot where my foot landed crumpled up like paper, and almost half of the bumper popped out of the plastic holding clips. The portion of the bumper from the rear driver side fender to well past the license plate was hanging down and about to fall off. Good news is it took my brother-in-law and I all of about two minutes to pop out the dent and snap the bumper back in place.

I realize Kia's, Hynudai's, and little cars like that have plastic or composite body parts. I just never realized an American legend muscle car would do the same.

-Mike

[MatticusMania]

My saturn was filled with styrofoam!

When I rear ended someone at about 15 mph the wholr front end collapsed on me!

[Tony G]

Pretty much every car has plastic or composite bumpers from kia's to ferrari. This has been the case for many years now.

[Tony G]

Originally Posted by MatticusMania

My saturn was filled with styrofoam!

When I rear ended someone at about 15 mph the wholr front end collapsed on me!

That is by design. The idea is to crush the car to absorb the impact.

[DudeistMonk]

it also makes the car far lighter, cheaper, fuel efficient, and of course gives it better acceleration and makes it faster.

[James Hart]

Originally Posted by DudeistMonk

it also makes the car far lighter, cheaper, fuel efficient, and of course gives it better acceleration and makes it faster.

and most are engineered to have impact absorbed (crumple zones) to increase survival rate of major collisions.

I know Tony said it already... but it's an important enough fact to repeat a few times IMHO

[hartke20g]

Originally Posted by DudeistMonk

it also makes the car far lighter, cheaper, fuel efficient, and of course gives it better acceleration and makes it faster.

this is definitely true, but give me a land yacht any day. i can't stand plastic cars. one little "hit" and half your front end is gone, seeing as all these plastic parts pretty much wrap around a good chunk of the whole body. and forget trying to get to a part that needs to be serviced- by the time that needs to be done the plastic's so brittle that trying to remove* it just snaps it off at the bolt.

*pry at/cuss at/kick/etc.

[thehurlatron]

Originally Posted by MJ5150

I just never realized an American legend muscle car would do the same.

-Mike

The mustang unfortunately, hasn't been "american muscle" for a long time now.
Any "muscle car" that offers a 4 or 6 cylinder looses it's status in a hurry.

But glad to hear you got your problem sorted out. I imagine the rental company would charge a pretty penny to "fix" it.

[mrokern]

I miss my '83 Impala (well, I don't miss 15mpg, but other than that...).

Had a girl in a Saturn who couldn't drive stick throw her car into reverse in a turn lane and FLOOR it backwards into my front bumper.

Her car? Totaled. Wasn't anything left of the trunk, much less the back bumper.

The police officer actually busted out laughing to my response when he asked if I had any damage to my Chevy. I looked at the point of that shiny chrome-plated steel bumper, licked my finger to wipe off a small smudge of her paint, and said, "Not anymore!"

-Mark

[Thor]

Originally Posted by MJ5150

So maybe most of you already know this. I found out the hard way on Sunday. We rented a 2007 Mustang over the weekend when we went to Bentonville.

I was riding with my brother-in-law in his Jeep, and my wife was driving the Mustang with her sister. We stopped at a mini-mart to grab some ice. I decided to sneak up behind my wife as she sat in the car and scare her. I got up to the bumper and I went to stomp on the bumper to make the whole car rock to shock her.

BAD IDEA!!!! The spot where my foot landed crumpled up like paper, and almost half of the bumper popped out of the plastic holding clips. The portion of the bumper from the rear driver side fender to well past the license plate was hanging down and about to fall off. Good news is it took my brother-in-law and I all of about two minutes to pop out the dent and snap the bumper back in place.

I realize Kia's, Hynudai's, and little cars like that have plastic or composite body parts. I just never realized an American legend muscle car would do the same.

-Mike

C'mon Mike! You left all the good parts out. I may need to
fill in the blanks for you.

We had left the Pacific NW in search of a little sunshine ...
...over the weekend to Bentonville to check out the Walmart
Employee Hall Of Fame ... when I ran up behind the car as I saw my wife looking at some hick with 3 teeth missing and ...
my brother and I ... took us all of 2 minutes just to duct
tape that baby right back on, good as new!

[James Hart]

Originally Posted by thehurlatron

The mustang unfortunately, hasn't been "american muscle" for a long time now.
Any "muscle car" that offers a 4 or 6 cylinder looses it's status in a hurry.

my 1967 Mustang had a dog of a straight 6... pretty sure that was an option in 1964 as well.

[CanadaMan]

Plastic body parts?

[MatticusMania]

Originally Posted by hartke20g

this is definitely true, but give me a land yacht any day. i can't stand plastic cars. one little "hit" and half your front end is gone, seeing as all these plastic parts pretty much wrap around a good chunk of the whole body. and forget trying to get to a part that needs to be serviced- by the time that needs to be done the plastic's so brittle that trying to remove* it just snaps it off at the bolt.

*pry at/cuss at/kick/etc.

Yeah, had the car been just a little more solid it wouldnt have crushed as much, and would have been fixable, but noo.... damn saturn and their stupid safety features!!! make me go and buy a new car...

[Chunk-O-Funk]

Originally Posted by Tony G

Pretty much every car has plastic or composite bumpers from kia's to ferrari. This has been the case for many years now.

+1

I'm in the auto parts business and bumpers have been made this way for quit a while now. I owned a 1979 Mercury Capri (Ford Mustang) and IIRC it also had a resin bumpers. Fear not about the structural integrity of the car though. What you knocked off is just the cover. Some manufactures will refer to it as a fascia, because that's all it really is. The structural part is behind that bumper cover. There should be a few screws in there somewhere, but it's mostly held on by plastic clips and a few retainers.

Still, I'm surprised it came of that easily. Must have been a Mustang made on a Friday at 4:50 PM.

[Mike Money]

Only plastic piece on my truck is the valance. And I took that thing off anyways... Hit to many rocks.

[KeithBMI]

At least they're not human body parts.

*bum dump pssh*

[Mike Money]

Upon inspection, that piece is steel also.

[fdeck]

My brother's Cutlass Extreme Brougham from the 70's had plastic body parts. The irony is that the steel parts like the bumpers fell off first due to rusting.

[ryco]

Originally Posted by mrokern

The police officer actually busted out laughing to my response when he asked if I had any damage to my Chevy. I looked at the point of that shiny chrome-plated steel bumper, licked my finger to wipe off a small smudge of her paint, and said, "Not anymore!"

Same thing happened to me once way back when. A Mazda RX pulled out from a stop sign on a side street in front of my old Ford Galaxy. I took the whole front end off of his car.

The cop wanted to know if there was any damage to my car. We both walked to the front of my car and not a scratch.

I felt so sorry for the other guy.

[DigMe]

Warning... Corvettes are made of fiberglass.

Sincerely,
1953