On the wife's new ES-350, both of us are having to learn how to drive a car with this much front end low overhang. Both of use have had several unintended scrapes while heading into parking alongside a curb. After getting used to the car, we will get the panel repaired/painted or replaced.

The car is starfire pearl, so scrapes easily show through the paint. Anyone have experience with touching up/repainting/replacing the panel? What kind of buck$ are involved?

 

damn. it.. same thing with me. I was using another car. .a ford and was driving over a parking lot. no problem.. with the lexus. i heard a scrape.. i ignored it and then realized it was scraping the ground.. it is barely visible from the front. hence I am not going to do anything.. now, If i drive slow over the sidewalk. it doesnot scrape. learnt the hard way..

 

I thought that I was the only one here with this problem. LOL. I've scraped mine on the parking curbs and steep grades turning off of main roads into shopping plazas.

 

I'm thinking this summer putting an aluminium plate under there to prevent bad news. I did on my last car and it works great.

 

Nice to know that I am not the only one. I did take it to a local shop. Was told that the entire part would have to be removed and repainted - about $400.00.

 

I had some scratches from front end scraping. While my car was on the lift getting the oil changed at my local garage, I touched up the scrapes with the Lexus touch up paint brush.
My car is dark blue so the brush marks are not noticeable.

 

I bought a tube of touch up paint the first day. However, a couple of the scrapes are higher up on the underside and will consume an entire bottle of the touchup.

For reference, the most severe scrape was when pulling into a 7-11 style business with head in parking. Unfortunately, I selected the end spot that had a curb, and swung in near the curb to give more room if someone parked next to me.

Thankfully, my wife did something similar, so I'm off the hook

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2011 ES-350 goes by the name "Pearly"
2010 RX-350 goes by the name "Hektor"...also answers to "Jack"