Car Show Damage - Quandry!

Hey all, been a while since I've been on, probably better for my pocketbook, lol. I moved last year from Calgary to Victoria so I haven't had a lot of time for the forums or to do much on my car.

Anyways that aside I was at a Mustang show in Victoria this past Sunday and I got there nice and early as always, I got parked in the designated spot (which is to say wherever they want because this club can't be bothered to set up a show properly, but I digress). About two hours later the show is in full swing, in our section about 3 crudely constructed rows of 05 and up Mustangs have arrived, probably 20 something cars so a good turn out. A guy in an 07 GT shows up a bit late and starts to drive the wrong way, one of the volunteer parking staff flags him down and has him start backing up the aisle to a parking spot. I'm a couple cars down chatting with a Shelby GT-500 owner and we all stand off to the side so he has room. We're watching this guy get backed up and I suddenly notice hey it's kinda tight there and right then the parking staffer tells the guy to turn, two of us yell but it's too late the driver who's not paying attention to his front end but rather the parking guy swings the car around and bumps into my car. Thankfully really slow and stopped immediately as he heard us yell.

So he removes his car from mine and they finish backing him in. I am standing there with hands over my face trying not to blow up as I can have a temper about my car (as many of us can). I walk over to my car as a couple of other owners come to see what happened and thankfully the damage appears to be limited to a couple inch spot on my bumper. I have a full front end clear bra installed on the car and it remarkably took the damage (again it appears). The impact tore the clear bra so it's pretty much useless now but the paint underneath looks OK aside from some of the bra goop underneath still stuck to it. Other driver lost a quarter sized chunk of paint from his bumper and got quite lucky he didn't hit my hood pin lanyard that was hanging down or it would have torn the crap out of his paint.

So I'm sitting there mumbling to myself the other driver comes over and apologizes and the parking attendant pulls a houdini and is nowhere to be found the rest of the show. Anyways got the guys info and I told him I'd check to see how much the clear bra would cost to fix.

Now for my problem, I have called a number of places here and nearby in Vancouver and NOBODY does these things anymore citing that they're more trouble than their worth and one shop who used to do it said they wouldn't even want to do the removal of the old film, yikes! So what do I call this guy and say? Do I keep going until I find someone that'll quote it or come up with a number we feel is fair or?

I feel bad for the guy as the parking guy should have been more attentive but he was driving and is an unfortunate casualty. At the same time I feel I shouldn't be punished for just being there. So with that in mind I don't want to soak the guy but I don't want to be on the hook for hundreds to get this repaired or heaven forbid when the current stuff comes off there is hidden damage.

Thanks for the comments guys, given the nature of the hit I don't think either of us were overly worried about getting cops involved.

Well the results are in, after A LOT of searching, emailing, calling with no replies I found the apparently only certified 3M Clear Bra installer left in BC and thankfully he works out of Victoria so yay, no trip to Vancouver to get it fixed, not that it would have been that big of a hassle.

Anyways I got the quote from him, to remove the old stuff he says $65 an hour at 2 hours. OK that's fine. The upper and lower bumper... $750, the hood section another $265....

Yeah... Anyways I am calling the guy tomorrow to tell him what I found out. I am going to press for the whole kit if he goes through insurance, if he wants to pay out of pocket then I am going to tell him just the upper/lower with removal costs. Still way more than expected. Dude said the lower bumper piece (which is the damaged piece) could be done for just shy of $500 not including the removal cost but he agreed that it would look out of place given the difference in weathering which I think shouldn't be my problem. It'll be one thing to disguise the difference in look between the hood weathering and the new bumper, it's a whole other thing to try and pass off a half assed patch job.

I'll let you know what he says, hopefully he doesn't decide to turn this into more of a hassle than it already has been. As it is I've been sick and then travelling on business across Western Canada so this has been a real pain to track this stuff down.

So finally got this wrapped up today, yes today... Ultimately the guy didn't want to pay for the full tick so off to ICBC. Couple weeks to get into there, got approval for... $300. I told the guy it wouldn't be enough and it wasn't. Thankfully the guy I found that does the installs went to bat for me and got the guy to approve both the upper and lower pieces of the bumper ($702). The hood section was pretty beat so I worked out a price to get that replaced ($200).

Got the pieces finally swapped out on the September long weekend but wait it's not done! Because the shop that did the work isn't a certified ICBC shop I had to take the invoice back to ICBC, another 3 weeks I finally manage to get in there this morning and got a cheque cut. So just over 2 full months to get it all settled out, what a grind. Looks really good, I forgot how clean and clear a fresh install looks.