If you regularly park in urban garages, esp in DC, I wouldn’t bother fixing it. It will happen again, and literally everyone I know in DC has a tale of how the parking garage damaged their car. They are just extremely poorly designed, trying to cram too many spaces into too little space.

Our Honda is also a 2010, and is also a dinged up mess. I will take responsibility for some of the dings, but my niece in grad school who lived with us during the summer a few years back messed up some of the side panels. She had no insurance and no money, at that point it was an 11 year old car, so I never got it fixed.

And, I don't really care. The car gets me from point A to point B, gets the kids off to college and back, all safely. If some schmuck is judging me for my 13 year old dinged up Honda, that's their problem, not mine. That $3k can go toward college tuition or a nice vacation with my family, not a body shop.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I would leave it and just save it for your kids. If you don’t value taking care of the car and bump into things, park in tight spots, scrape against poles then this is what years of neglect will look like. I care about cars and they have never been in the condition you described. Take care of the new car and be careful who you park next to, never near drivers doors, pick corner spots, or park further away.

You are insane. Corner spots? Further away? I assume you aren’t parking a full size car in 70s garages in the city. It’s a completely different problem, and this car has ZERO cameras.

I’m the PP and answered your question, you aren’t unlucky with the dings, those are self inflicted. If you want to keep your car nice that’s the advice I’d give you to maintain a car (old or new) in nice condition. Or if you want to fix it get it done right and spend $7-$10k. Or just continuing driving into poles and buy a new car every 3 years.

I was driving in a parking garage hunting for a space and saw this happen to someone. She scraped the side of her car against a pole because she was backing in. A lot of people back into spaces but when there's a pole right there it's just easier to go front in and back out.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't think most people worry about dings in their car, especially if it's 10 years old.

But what about when cars are newer like 3 years old?

I think it depends on the age and person. A car that's less than three years is pretty new so a lot of people would make minor repairs depending on what they are. Personally, I almost never bother with them but if I literally just bought a new car and backed into a pole the next day, I would probably get the bumper fixed. If a rock flew up and hit the hood and scratched it, I probably wouldn't bother.