Two Of My Cars Somehow Got Smashed Up In Crashes In Less Than 24 Hours

There are text messages that nobody wants to get. A car enthusiast never wants to read about an expensive repair, and if you love someone one of the last texts you want to receive is “Just got in an accident.” I received that text not once, but twice in less than 24 hours. Thankfully, nobody was hurt. But now we wait to see what’s wrong with my wife’s beloved 2012 Scion iQ. My 2008 Smart Fortwo also took a beating, too. Let’s see what happened to two of my city cars after they got crashed.

Before we start, I just want to reiterate that nobody was hurt here! In both cases, the little city cars got the short end of the stick. Sheryl was unharmed, as were the occupants in the other vehicles. My wife is still saddened about her bad, super-not-good span of 24 hours, but as I’ve told her, all that was damaged was some plastic and metal. So long as the meatbags in all of the vehicles are okay, I consider it a win! Cars can be replaced, but people cannot.

The bigger question hanging over our heads right now is the fate of the Scion iQ. It’s currently at a body shop getting assessed. This car isn’t worth much, and we fear that it’s going to get totaled even if the damage isn’t that bad. But wait, how do you get into two crashes in less than 24 hours in the first place?

That Sinking Feeling

I received one of the scariest texts of my life at 11:53 a.m. on Sunday. Sheryl’s been going through an unfortunate run of bad luck and wasn’t able to attend EAA AirVenture Oshkosh with me this year. Instead, she was working on the Sunday I was headed home.

At the time, I had Super Cruise on and running in my Chevrolet Silverado EV press loaner. I received a text from Sheryl, which read “Just got in an accident” on the truck’s infotainment display. I knew Sheryl was driving somewhere, so I began to fear the worst. Sheryl continued, telling me that she had looked away from the road for a moment and accidentally crashed into the back of a Hyundai Santa Fe. Or, more specifically, she said she hit one of the Hyundai Santa Fe generations that “doesn’t have a rear bumper.”

There is a sort of trend going on in auto design where rear bumpers are flush with the tailgate surface, almost guaranteeing a damage multiplier in a rear-end collision. Oddly, more than one generation of the Santa Fe has this sort of non-bumper rear bumper deal going on, so I had Sheryl tell me what the Santa Fe looked like. We landed on a third-generation model, which went on sale in the 2019 model year.

Sheryl did not get pictures of the other car, and honestly, I get it. She was too distraught and frazzled. But she did tell me that the Hyundai got a big knot on its bumper, and the flush tailgate was spared.

As for the Scion? Well, as I stated earlier, it took the brunt of the damage. Once Sheryl got home, I started examining the damage. The left side of the front end didn’t look bad. The bumper looks popped out of place, but the left fender looks okay. The same cannot be said for the right side.

More Than A Boop

Starting at about the middle of the front end, the front bumper begins to warp. Then there’s the hood, which is crumpled and bent inward at the middle. Moving right from there, the crumple gets worse, with the hood losing a good couple of inches. The bumper and the headlight appear pushed in a few inches. The right fender also got bent and pushed back. At least you can technically get into the engine bay, but that’s facilitated by reaching your hand into the new side hood scoop.

Things are worse under the skin. The hood release no longer functions, and neither does the air-conditioner. There’s also a concerning tapping noise under the hood when the vehicle is running. Finally, the steering is now a bit goofy as the steering wheel is nowhere near straight while the steering itself is sloppy.

Understandably, Sheryl is broken up about the whole ordeal. Not only did she crash her car into someone just trying to go about their day, but the Hyundai had a kid in it, too. What if she were driving a bigger vehicle? She thought. What if she were driving faster? She could have hurt someone, she continued. Her conclusion was that she cannot let herself get distracted again.

[Ed Note: I also once got distracted and didn’t hit the brakes hard enough as a car ahead of me came to a stop. I bumped it with my old junky Honda Accord; it happens! -DT]. 

Then she thought about her car. She’s tried her best to do right with this car, and she feared she had killed her poor little vehicle. This crash happened only two weeks after she had ditched the car’s rusty and bent steel wheels for a set of nice alloy wheels from a Scion iA. Her car looked pretty sharp! Here’s a before photo:

After:

She was also taking care of some items she had put off for a while, including hatch struts and a fresh set of pads and rotors for the front axle. She had recently taken care of the drums in the rear, as well as a CVT flush. As I’ve noted in previous stories about this Scion, Sheryl drives her cars 40,000 miles a year, so she likes being on top of maintenance. The owner’s manual recommends oil changes every 10,000 miles, but she gets hers changed every 5,000 miles.

Depending on who you ask, light trucks and passenger vehicles get into over 8 million crashes in the United States each year. That’s over 21,917 crashes every single day, 913 crashes every hour, or 15 crashes every minute. We’re all human, and we all make mistakes. Crashing your car doesn’t automatically make you a failure, and a minor crash is not worth destroying yourself over.

Besides, one of the upshots of owning over a dozen cars is that Sheryl didn’t need to get a rental car when she could just drive one of the cars in my vast fleet while her Scion gets fixed. She chose the next best thing to her Scion, one of my Smarts. In this case, she chose my 2008 Smart Fortwo Passion Coupe. I bought this car in 2020 for $1,400. Since then, I’ve used the car as a Gambler 500 rig, a pickup truck, and a daily driver. It would handle Sheryl’s driving without a problem.

The Smart’s Unlucky Day

So, on Monday morning, Sheryl needed to drive a bit downstate for court and left at 5 a.m. behind the wheel of my Smartie. Later that morning, I woke up and got ready for my day when I got a call and a text from Sheryl. When I answered, she told me, “You won’t believe what just happened.” Now, I sometimes dabble in dark humor, so I jokingly said “the Smart got crashed,” and was legitimately shocked when she said yes.

This time, she didn’t rear-end a car, but a car rear-ended her. She said she was hit by a 2019 or newer Nissan Sentra while sitting at a red light. The Nissan hit her hard enough that it pushed my Smart into the intersection. Thankfully, the traffic that had the green did dodge the Smart.

Thankfully, Sheryl said, the Nissan got no more than a scratch. Its driver wasn’t concerned about exchanging insurance or calling the cops, but demanded that Sheryl apologize for getting into his way. Sheryl, who did nothing wrong by sitting at a solid red, did not apologize. Instead, she tried to diffuse the situation, but the Nissan driver’s behavior became even more erratic. Eventually, the Nissan guy took off, and that was the end of that weird situation. Take a look at the Smart:

Enhance! If you look closely, you’ll see that the Nissan put a bunch of small dents, dings, and one tiny hole in the bumper:

Enhance again! Here’s the worst of the damage, which is basically nothing:

Thankfully, my Smart was seemingly a bit of a sponge. I’ve found a dent in the rear bumper, and that’s it. I’m sure the crash bar under the plastic took some damage, but that is something I can easily replace by myself. Besides, this car is worth only $1,000 or so.

Sheryl felt like the universe was trying to tell her something. It’s bad enough to get in one crash, let alone two in the span of a single day. I consoled her and let her know that I’m not mad or even disappointed. Crashes happen! Besides, the Smart is a cheap and rusty pile of junk with hidden zip ties holding its bumpers on. Adding a dent to its already very imperfect body is a huge nothingburger to me.

What hurt was falling down a full flight of stairs on that day, which hurt so bad that I couldn’t even use my right foot for walking until this morning.

What Will Happen To The Scion?

The big question was what was going to happen to the Scion. The body shop painted a negative picture, saying that if parts are no longer in production and they cannot find any used, that alone would likely result in the vehicle being totaled. The other item that was likely to total the car was core support damage. It wasn’t that these parts are impossible to repair, but the car has such a low value that any real big repairs would cross the total threshold.

Sadly, Sheryl already allegedly had the last brand-new Scion iQ bumper in America on her car. Last year, a truck shredded a tire and Sheryl hit the debris, putting a giant hole in the car’s original bumper. The body shop that replaced the bumper claimed to have found just one new bumper in the whole country. So, I wasn’t surprised when the body shop handling the crash damage said that there were no new bumpers in America. I give it a 50/50 chance that the car will be totaled.

Update: As I was writing this piece, the body shop called and said it was able to find all of the parts needed to fix the Scion, and the repair will take about a week. Insurance already approved the repair, too. Ike the Scion iQ will ride again!

Now, I have the estimate on hand, but I want our lovely readers to guess. How much do you think it’ll cost to fix this little car? Take a guess and leave that guess down below, then click here to see if you were right. We do not know what parts need to be replaced yet, but at least we have a dollar figure. As for the Smart, I probably won’t bother to fix the bumper at all, and I’ll get a crash bar online.

The most important part about all of this is that everyone is okay. Crashes are bound to happen. Maybe you make a mistake, or maybe someone else does. Not even autonomous driving systems are perfect. At the end of the day, nobody got hurt here. Your car can be replaced, but you cannot be. So, if you get into a minor fender bender, don’t beat yourself up so much. If you get into two fender benders in the span of a day, well, that’s terrible luck, but again, so long as everyone is okay, who cares about the plastic, metal, glass, and rubber that got damaged.