Don't hit a curb with your (new-gen) Dodge Dart.

Im not sure about you since your in the industry but I feel that's "normal" I mean its a cheap car yes but it's a very new car that happens to be italian/euro and is based off all new parts so you cant grab a used rack cause there arent any nor does it have any "sister cars" or based off something else. Sounds like the PO got the best end of the deal just forfeiting the car.

Any new car will have shockingly high parts prices. Price out a rack and wheel bearings and ABS sensor for a Colorado sometime...

Or:

If you do hit a curb with your Dart, hit something bigger and finish the job.

I'm not sure how I'd ever end up driving a Dart, but I guess after reading this, if I ever had one and hit a curb I would just hope that the impact would somehow also catch the car on fire and burn it to the ground.

Make sure it doesn't have any funny stuff like revised lower control arms/knuckles/ball joints - a coworker had a Fiat 500 that got all that stuff replaced on both sides because one side had something wrong with it. IIRC the knuckle and LCA came together as an assembly? It was something weird but I don't recall the details since it wasn't mine.

Not sure how much the 500 and Dart share front end wise, may be nothing but worth checking.

I wonder if you could get the actual Alfa parts?

Hopefully the aftermarket starts taking care of the car or Mopar lowers prices as the spares pile grows. Even though the car's on a semi-common platform with a Fiat/Alfa product that doesn't mean that parts are any easier to come by on this side of the world.

Owning a lot of Subarus has kind of numbed me to ridiculous parts prices. I probably have Stockholm^WGunma syndrome.

"Don't hit a curb with your (new-gen) Dodge Dart."

$5k? They must have drilled it. I prefer not to hit curbs at all, but when my wife hit a curb in my Neon years ago, it cost me $40 for a new steel wheel.

This is what insurance is for. The days of $40 parts are long gone and most people don't DIY. Car companies price parts like this based on the idea that insurance will pay for it.

Welcome to the modern era.

Brett_Murphy wrote: "Don't hit a curb with your (new-gen) Dodge Dart." $5k? They must have drilled it. I prefer not to hit curbs at all, but when my wife hit a curb in my Neon years ago, it cost me $40 for a new steel wheel.

If it collapsed the suspension on the front and rear, "drilled it" is an understatement. I'm thinking the person was blowing through a parking lot crossways and nailed a parking curb. Hit one of those at 60mph in any car and you're doing severe damage.

Or, possibly just spun in an intersection and nailed a curb sideways.

04-08 TL's almost always required a $1800 subframe after a curb hit. It was a beautiful piece of welded aluminum and all, but was about as stout as wet noodle. A normal curb hit was typically a $4500 repair in mechanicals as long as no body damage was found.

Heck, a curb bounce in a Saturn not even hard enough to tweak a steel wheel would nuke a subframe. IIRC they were $1100 in 1997, plus labor.

They had a really dumb design, the track arm (LCA? Ball joint?) mount was just welded to a horizontal part of the stamping, in single shear. Huge cantilever action with side loads. Later models put the mount in double shear, which helped slightly, but any rust and the subframe still folds, except it folds "down" instead of "up".

I can't say I am surprised on the price of parts. I remember owning a 1st gen Tiburon and the car I replaced it with, a 318ti. I was shocked that prices for parts on the bimmer were on a whole, cheaper than for the hyundai

Brett_Murphy wrote: "Don't hit a curb with your (new-gen) Dodge Dart." $5k? They must have drilled it. I prefer not to hit curbs at all, but when my wife hit a curb in my Neon years ago, it cost me $40 for a new steel wheel.

Same here. I curbed my neon once and all it needed was a new wheel and tire, but at that point I already had multiple spares.

Don't take your early 90's Civic into a curb with the rear. That welded in crossmember and trunk floor is a lot of labour...

In reply to Streetwiseguy:

I've seen enough doglegging EG Civics to know that there are ways around "a lot of labour."