Anybody who's spent more than 20 minutes on a major American highway knows one true thing—most of us can’t drive. Each year, the DMV doles out a fair number of drivers licenses and revokes only a very small percentage, leaving most adults (even the exceptionally dumbs ones) willing and able to get behind the wheel. And if it’s not clear on the freeway, bad driving is clear as day in any parking lot. SUVs in compact spaces, compact cars parked sideways, and not a white line in sight—the parking lot is an exercise in patience and stupidity. The irony is, we now have more parking assistance technologies at our disposal than ever—sensors, cameras, even self-parking cars. But who has time to listen for a beeping back up sensor when you’re chatting with your BFF on your headset or crushing some candy on your phone? This is why, more than ever, we need the one thing that has protected us for generations from sub-par parking, small taps in traffic, and a general ding and scratch obsession. Now, more than ever, it's time to bring back the bumper! For over 50 years, the bumper was not only a useful way to keep stuff off of your ride, it was an art form. That big, shiny horizontal chrome appendage was often the most exciting part of a vehicle, no matter where it came from. American auto designers, not surprisingly, took the lead in what would be the bumper’s hay day.
Ford
Chevy
and of course...
Buick
These American manufacturers knew how to make a mobile interference blocker into a thing of beauty. But also, the bumper was an easily replaceable auto part. However, as the bumper evolved from a chrome jewel to a rubber-coated garage deflector, shopping cart batter and fly swatter, we stopped loving this essential auto piece the way we should’ve. We covered it in stickers, painted it the same color as our cars and neglected it, until finally and worst of all... we removed it all together. Now we live in a world where seeing a factory installed bumper on any car, is more rare than this line up of beautifully bumped vintage Porsche 356s: There was a time when all of the world’s finest sports cars had bumpers.
Porsche
Lamborghini
even Ferrari had its fair share of bumper madness: (Of course, some of this was government regulated, but that's a fact that's inconvenient to this argument, so please disregard.) These days seeing a bumper on a sports car is rarer than finding someone that knows how to parallel park a Prius. It just doesn’t happen. And are we okay with that? Are we okay with just having a sheet of plastic with a dash of metal between us and up to 1,000 hp? From a manufacturer’s standpoint, that’s just fine. The more we scratch and dent our rides, the more their service departments clean up. I’m not saying it’s a conspiracy, but the absence of a bumper isn’t exactly a public service. Many of us have taken this problem into our own hands. Bull bars are the easiest way to recreate what should’ve been there in the first place. Or sometimes we create our own rubber coating... But this my friends is not enough. We need to take our bumpers back! Stop buying cars that don’t meet this need, send a message to automakers that bumperless vehicles are NO LONGER WHAT WE WANT! And if you find yourself with a car that doesn’t have a bumper and you’d like to dispose of it in protest - like this Ford GT, as an example... ... I will gladly take it off your hands, in solidarity, for the cause. You’re welcome.
