Minor body damage. Do I need to fix it?

It looks like it's rusting already, I would fix it if I was you.

 

Well to me that looks like rust but hard to tell but if thats all the way down to the metal I would be getting it sealed at least if your not going to get it sprayed at least that way its protected.

 

I'd just compound it and see what it looks like. If you can live with it, you'd save the $500-$1000.

 

In an enlarged picture that's surface rust beginning. At the very leased give it a rub down and prime then top cote with aerosol paint. In three months you will regret not doing it.

 

Need to fix? Perhaps to reduce the effects of rust. In many cases these scratches impact sales or trade in price when it comes time to sell. The other thing is blending paint on an older car can be a nightmare if you fix it but hopefully a good Body Shop can do a good job for you. Let us know what you decide.

 

Wonder if most of it can be buffed out with Polish. May be worth a try.

 

If I was you, I'd at least go talk to a body shop to get their opinion on it, tell them you're not overly interested in getting it fixed, but you want to protect it as much as you can.

 

If it was mine, I would be calling my insurance company and getting it fixed. If you found it like that, simply tell them that someone hit it. You would have to pay the deductible, but in the long run it will be worth it.

Something like what is pictured will drastically reduce the resale value of the car by much more than what it would cost to fix it. Most dealers will figure a thousand a panel and just looking at your pic I would venture to say that a good body shop will be a grand or more. Maaco might do it for a couple of hundred, but they are not that great.

Ron

 

Curious to your reasons for not wanting to get it fixed? Does the car have super high mileage? Is it on its last legs?

The Prius have been known to go for 300,000+ miles.

Personally if it were my car, It would've been in the shop, at the latest, 3 days after that happened. Not just for aesthetic reasons but for the value protection of my investment!

 

The car is only 5 years old. If it was my Prius I would fix it.

 

Agree, that's rust. If all that white is your primer then that's too much area for a half a$$ amateur job. Maaco is OK if you plan on selling the car within a year or two but you won't be happy with the work after the warranty expires. It may or may not be worth going through the insurance but at least get an estimate or two.

 

I had similar damage happen this summer. There was an ambulance behind me so I pulled to the side. There was a huge chunk of loose concrete that popped up and scraped up the car.

I have the same blue as you and I wound up going to the dealer and they had one tube of touch-up paint, but it was a special order. The closest dealer that had it in stock was over 30 miles away in NJ so I looked online and found paintscratch.com. They custom mix paint and you can buy it in a few different ways, tube, spray can, etc and they also sell clearcoat.

After the paint arrived I spent about an hour prepping and painting and while it is not perfect you really would need to look hard to tell that the area was touched up. I highly recommend them.

The one thing that you will definitely need to deal with is the few areas where it has scraped through to the metal. Even if you can not see it, rust has set in. What I did was use my Dremel to grind the spots clear. I did a few years back on another car and the spot held up well for years - we sold it my wife's co-worker so I saw the car every once in a while and the repair held up with no rust for 6 or 7 years.

 

I think your decision was wise and that the $250 you spent was a good solid investment in your Prius.

Good luck to you!

Ron