There's nothing economical about economy cars these days.

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety -- an auto safety testing lab funded by a consortium of insurance companies -- has released a report on the cost of repairing small cars after minor, low speed collisions.  The results are simply depressing.

Kicking Tires explains, "The organization used a barrier to replicate the full bumper of another car in full frontal and rear collisions, as well as frontal and rear corner collisions at 6 mph and 3 mph, respectively."  They performed the tests on 20 small cars.

The least-expensive car to repair proved to be the Ford Focus, which suffered $3,031 of damage in the four minor bumps.  That's about 20% of the cost of the tested car.  The most expensive was the Volkswagen Rabbit, which suffered $9,551 worth of damage in four collisions as 6 mph or less -- more than 60% of the cost of the car.

What could be done to make small cars less expensive to repair in such small collisions?  In a press release, the IIHS says "It wouldn't take much for automakers to reduce the cost of repairing the damage that occurs in low-speed collisions."  They'd simply need to make bumpers longer "so they protect headlights and other critical and costly equipment at the corners of vehicles," and taller "so they engage the bumpers on higher riding SUVs and pickup trucks instead of underriding them."  They should also not build bumpers "too close to the car body. This makes for a sleek look, but it doesn't leave much room for absorbing crash energy."

In fact, the Institute did its own test of this theory, modifying the bumpers of a Toyota Prius to extend the bar by"10 inches on the passenger side under the headlight."  Then they repeated the front corner collision again.  The result?  "The headlight and fender were undamaged and the repair cost dropped from $1,200 to $254."

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