got into an accident in my 06 enthusiast recently. brought the car to the body shop. just picked up today and they ask me if i bought the car new. which i did in 2006. they tell me that the hood they took off was aftermarket!!! how do i go about confronting the dealership and get some kind of compensation? has this happened to anyone else? thanks for any help!

 

lol

 

Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros- Come in please

Great song.

 

is there something i said incorrectly about what happened? or am i just out of luck?

 

my antenna is not OEM...OMG

 

what im trying to get at is, the dealership sold me a car that was possibly damaged as brand new.

 

hey man, what does the hood look like? It is cf? Vented? Painted cf? How do they know its aftermarket? Pics? You gotta give more info. And just because something is aftermarket doesnt mean it was in an accident.

 

So you bought a car from a dealer that was supposed to be new back in 2006. I assume it had no mileage on it. And now you think it has an aftermarket hood. Is it carbon fiber or some other material? Or is it metal like the OEM hood. Have you actually looked at an OEM hood to determine what a real one looks like vs yours?

You do realize that if you take it back to the dealer, they will laugh you right out of there. They, like anybody else will claim that YOU replaced it sometime in the last four years.

Why would a dealer replace it with an aftermarket hood - they could very easily obtain a factory fresh OEM hood if the original one had been damaged. I can't say I've seen a lot of aftermarket hoods that look and feel like OEM one. Usually they are fiberglass or CF.

Cars get dinged all the time and they get painted, parts replaced, etc. They are still "new", right?

How about some pics of the underside of the hood?

 

it was painted and passed off as oem and new. im just goin by what the autobody shop told me. for insurance purposes they hold on to it, but they will hold on to it for me until i can clear this up. but what other reasons could there be that the dealership replaced the hood w/ an aftermarket one? and if they did, that cant possibly be legal to sell as new, right?

 

dave, i totally understand, and know ill be laughed at if i were to claim this at the dealership. i never really needed to compare because i thought everything was new. i realize that dealership may need to repair cars at their shop. it just sucks to pay for something u thought of as new, undamaged. im just wondering if there was more to it that just fixing a damaged hood. so im really just out of luck?

 

id have to get back to u on pics. id have to go go back to the body shop tomorrow

 

this is pretty interesting. Can you get photos of the hood in question?

 

There is no reason that a dealer would replace the hood with an aftermarket one. Period.

Assume they did and 6 days/weeks/months later you bring it to another Nissan dealer for service and they tell you - we can't do anything about that, it's not an factory hood. Selling dealer would be screwed. It would have been way too easy for them to have used an OEM hood.

Did the body shop inspect the car for other signs of damage and repair? Certainly the hood wouldn't be the only thing replaced had it been in an accident.

It's all pointless, 4 years after the fact, you are going to have a hard time jumping over the hurdle of them claiming "you replaced it some time in the past 4 years". The longer it has been out of their custody and in yours, the less likely anybody (them, jury, etc.) is going to believe that the dealer swapped hoods out on a new car.


Maybe I ought to take my 04 back to the dealer, I think they broke that plastic piece around the door opening before they delivered it to me.

 

+1
I worked at a dealership, and I know for a fact things happen and "brand new" cars get damaged. For example, it could have been sitting in the lot and someone may have vandalized it. A lot attendant may have detailed it, forgot to close the latch, and on the way to the gas station to fill it up the hood could have flown open. Maybe a lot attendant pulled too far forward with it and scraped it on the hitch of a lifted truck parked in front of it. You never know,those lot attendants get paid $7/hr, you'd be surprised at the amount of "uh-ohs" that happen to brand new cars. Like Dave says, I highly doubt a Nissan dealership would replace it with ANYTHING but an OEM product. Ask your body guy what makes him think its aftermarket! Your OEM hood should have some stickers on it saying something about the clear coat.

 

I'm curious as to why the body shop doing the repairs would even be worried about what type of hood was on it in the first place.

 

Exactly. Unless it's a shop that specializes in Nissans, they would probably have no idea what a real one looks like versus an aftermarket clone. I'm not even sure if there is a 3rd party market for Nissan OEM parts. It's common for Ford, GM, Chrysler products because the market is so large - but a 350Z hood?

In addition to the sticker about the Hard Clear Coat, there should be labels regarding vacuum hose routine, emissions and the air conditioning. I doubt somebody could/would cleanly remove those from the OEM hood and transfer them to an aftermarket hood.

 

I work at a dealership and according to service, we would not put a non-factory hood on any model, for any reason. We do not even do Carbon Fiber prodcuts because they have a worse crash rating. Its illegal to do it in Illinois, I'm not sure about the state you live in, but rest assured that the Body shop is either retarded, or the dealership was sent a non-OEM hood. Which i highly doubt.

 

Perhaps the body shop is confused because the OEM hood is aluminum, rather than steel, like the rest of the body?

 

I work at a Honda dealer. Tech for 27 years. First tell tail sign of an accident car is
missing emission labels or painted over labels under the hood. If there are no labels,
then the hood could still be an oem replacement, but the labels were not replaced.
Labels need to be ordered per vin number. Most body shops don't bother with it.

 

pic under hood

pic under hood
the body shop told me this barcode shows it was a replacement order