When parking in a parking lot recently, I rested my front tires against the standard concrete parking block you find in most parking lots these days (see pic below). Ran into the store, and when I backed out the bumper and underside of the car basically tore off. 8 days in the body shop and $1,800 later, it's an expensive lesson. I suspect the car lowered while I was in the store and it was resting on the curb, or the little flap running the width of the car was to blame. Either way - don't let this happen to you.

 

Thank God we don't have these in the UK !

Plenty of other things, though................

 

Ouch that had to hurt.

Having driven lowered cars in my younger years it trained me very quickly not to park too close to curbs and parking blocks-if you scrape going in, you will have to endure the scraping sound coming back out. Unfortunately I had one low enough that it didn’t scrape the bottom of the car...if you pulled in too close, you would hit the front of the bumper on the curb!

Your scenario is even worse, though. Having not scraped while parking, you would not think to look while leaving.

Glad you got it fixed, it is a good reminder of something else to look out for if you are still sporting the air suspension!

 

Oooh nasty ! I did that to the rear bumper of my old Merc 190E when accidently I hitched it over the base of column in a French filling station. Had to drive home with the bits across the rear seats so less room for crates of Belgian beer

 

I did it even worse way in a Jeep before. I went forward over them. The car wouldn't get out without engaging 4-LOW.

 

Definitely something to keep in mind when parking. Thanks for the heads up.

 

Hmm I just did the same exact thing last week in the L.A. Music Center parking lot and nothing bad happened. Not the first time. My air suspension must raise up immediately at start.