Crashed my aveo!

[jamesd]

Not too long ago my wife rear ended a car with her 2003 Dodge Stratus. Hood was bent, bumper torn and I think the frame may have been bent and one of the headlights was cracked from the housing. We bought this car for $1700. As far as insurance we only had liability, not full coverage because well, the car was not worth that much anyways. I took it to the body shop and their quote was $3,500 to repair the car. So we took it to this shady tree body shop. I mean this place looked pretty bad and these were old world body shop guys. They pretty much told me if I wanted to repair the car and not replace any parts on it they quoted me $300 to fix the car. I thought about it and I said sure why not. It can't possibly look any worse than it already is. Well three days later and the my car looks better then it was before it was crashed. No parts were replaced, just repaired. They used bondo, silicone to seal the head light from the back, straighten the radiator support and hood. Of course they prep and painted front end half of the car to match. I mean exact match no less! I was floored on how well these guys repaired the front end. For $300 I was expecting them to use duct tape to hold up something. Who knows, maybe they did but you can't tell. These guys were old body shop men and knew what they were doing. My decision to get that car repaired was based on how good the engine and over all the worthiness of the car. I figured this car was worth $300 in getting fixed. If it was a car that kept giving me problems and a money a pit I probably would want to use that money towards another car. I would shop around for these small mom and pop body shops and see what they can do for you.