A couple days ago a girl backed into the passenger side of the rear bumper of my '97 540i. As you can see she smashed the trim a bit; what you can't see is the paint where she hit is cracked pretty bad (little spider cracks). Any guesses as to how much it's going to cost to fix? I'm thinking if I get enough maybe I'll swap to a newer style.

Well you will have to get the whole rear bumper painted. Is her insurance paying for it? If you shop around you can get a decent job for 200-250.

Similar thing happened to me also about 3 weeks ago. I had a quote from the guys that does all BMW's body works. 450 to fix, meaning repaint. 880 to replace a new bumper.

Yeah her insurance is paying for it so I want the best. Does the $450 include a new chromeline trim piece?

I have a little worse damage in the same area, someone hit me while I was parked. I was quoted $300 to bring it back.

It should. Whenever you go to the adjuster he will add that chrome trim to the estimate if it is damaged.

Well, this is what I did. the adjuster came and access the demage and did his calculations. I talked to the body shop and they told me the two types of repair. To fix to original look 450, To replace oem bumper 880. I just need to know the numbers at this point. The at fault insurance company will either contact you and tell you what the damage is worth and see if you will except or they will just simply send you a check in the amount of what they think the damage is worth. In my case, they send me a check and it just fall in the middle of the two numbers. I have two choices: 1. take the amount, fix the bumper and buy a steak dinner. 2. Go to the body shop and replace the bumper and let the body shop issue a supplement amount to the her insurance. In this case if I choose number 2. I will have a new bumper without spending a $ but I will not get a steak dinner. I hope this helped.

Well that small amount of damage dosen't warrant a new bumper, chrome trim? mmmmmaybe. Unless you're trying to milk the insurance company. My damage is worse and I was quoted $300 so I know this can be done for the same or less. Remember, when you milk the insurance company, we all pay in the long run.

pfft- get your settlement, replace the trim piece (www.realoem.com for part number) and buff the swapped paint off, put rest of said settlement in the bank. All I see is a piece of trim with busted tabs and some swapped paint- if the inner metal bumper is bent it can be had for about 250.00 new- not as easy to DIY.

If the other person's insurance is covering this, then you may want to push for a new bumper, unless it is clear that only the trim is busted and only surface damage to bumper cover. They'll probably have to take the bumper cover off to be certain nothing else is off. Once these things get a little tweaked, bent, warped, etc., it's hard to get it back to how it should be.

It's definately going to need a repaint since there are spider cracks around the point of impact. I'm going to try to push for a new bumper because I have a couple other imperfections on the rear. I'm not trying to milk the insurance company, I'd even let them deduct the cost to repair the two other imperfections :D

just get a new m-tech bumper..

I've been wanting to but it looks like they're around $500-$750 unpainted and uninstalled.

I will fix it for 1 million dollars. Let me know if you still need it done Mr. jungle juice.:wiggle