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I was driving south on Route 35 in New Jersey, concrete divider on my left, car on my right. I’m driving about 40 miles an hour, about three car lengths behind a CJ7 Jeep. The jeep ran over a metal license plate and kicked it up about two feet in the air behind his car, coming right at me.
The rest was like slow motion. I can’t move left into the concrete divider, and I can’t move right into the large ford sedan, so I grit my teeth and slowly apply brake in the hope it will land before I reach it.
No such luck. It hit and went under the car. I pulled over and couldn’t find any marks on a cursory examination.
A couple of days later I was washing the car when I found the first signs of the plate hitting my car. Inside the lower air dam up front, there are two horizontal slats. The upper slat had a nice little gouge out of it where the edge of the plate had squarely hit it. Oh well! It could have been worse; at least it didn’t hit the hood.
Gouge from license plate!
Same day. The car is dry and while waxing, come across a mark on the face of the bumper immediately the left of the license plate. At first I thought it was bug splatter, but then realize if is a scuffmark from the edge of the plate hitting my bumper full on. This part of the bumper has X-Pel. I’m not sure really why it’s only a scuff, because the X-Pel protected bumper actually took the brunt of the force from the plate before the plate rotated lower and hit the air dam leaving the gouge. The bumper has not indentation or damage. I’m told the X-Pel can be polished out with Meguiar's. Cool!
Scuff on X-Pel from license plate!
When I wanted to buy a Z3 I test-drove a couple of CPO Z3’s at a local dealer, and they all looked like they had their hoods sandblasted with stones. I wanted my Z3 to look nice, especially when I got it, and that was a driving force for my buying a new car. If the X-Pel will protect the bumper from a license plate then my hood should definitely be safe from rocks…
Than
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