I Scratched My Porsche Cayenne

The other day, I wrote an article about how I scratched my Cayenne. On the same day, I took it to a body shop for an estimate, and after sending it in for repairs, it came back—so I want to share about that experience.

The body shop I entrusted with the Cayenne repairs is the same one I used many times when I had just graduated from being a paper driver and was driving an Audi A3 (really, many times…).

Their prices are reasonable and their skills excellent, so I decided to go with them again this time.

When I brought the car for an estimate, they said, “It’s better to have it fixed before the holiday, right? We’ll rush it for you.” and kindly lent me a loaner car.

I thought, “It’ll probably take 3 to 4 days to repair,” but in reality, they fixed it in just two days.

I’m truly grateful…

Now, here’s what the scratch looked like before the repair:

And this is after the repair:

Amazing… you can’t tell at all. According to the shop, “only a professional body shop technician would notice,” but as an amateur, I can’t see any trace. They didn’t even replace the plastic parts, yet they finished it this well—it’s truly impressive.

As for the repair cost, it was “35,000 yen plus tax.” On top of that, they even washed the body and interior. What a considerate shop…

For a moment, I thought, “If anything happens, I want to come here again,” but no, I firmly promised myself to be more careful so I won’t need their help again.

Repair Costs Vary by Body Color

By the way, a few days after I scratched the Cayenne, my husband’s sister, who drives a MINI Cooper, also scratched her car a little—even though she had just bought it a month ago. It was a very minor scratch with just a small paint chip, but she also took it to the same body shop that fixed the Cayenne.

The shop told her:

The scratch itself is small, but since the body color is a special “British Racing Green,” matching the color for repair is difficult. With a bit of margin, the estimate comes to around 40,000 to 50,000 yen. We’d be happy to do it here, but paying that much for such a small scratch feels like a waste, and since she had a beginner’s mark on the car, it might even be a bit embarrassing. It’s good that the damage was only this minor. She’ll probably be more careful going forward, and since this is different from a scratch made by an experienced driver after a month, it might be better to wait and see a bit more.

(What a kind shop…!)

Regarding this, my husband said:

The Cayenne’s body color was solid white, so although the scratch area was large, that’s probably why it was fixed at that price. When we took the 970 Panamera with Carrara White body color that we had before for an estimate, several places refused to do the repair, and we ended up having it fixed at the dealer. The reason they refused was that metallic white body colors are special and hard to match properly. So for this scratch, if the color had been something like Crayon, I’ve heard the color matching would be very difficult and the repair cost would be high, and ordinary shops wouldn’t be able to fix it. For such special body colors, it’s definitely better to ask the dealer, which would have been expensive. Even with solid colors, black shows scratches and wash marks easily… In that sense, having a normal white body color for a daily driver might be a good choice.

Indeed… Beautiful body colors suit sports cars well, and I want to choose such colors, but when I think about repair costs if I scratch or damage the car… If I ever buy a Porsche in the future, while I don’t want to choose a color just because I might scratch it, I’m leaning toward playing it safe with white these days.