The my front left indicator light went on my BMW i3. Tried looking up the specs for the bulb to buy a new one. Of course it wasn't that simple. Oh boy was I naive.

No, it required a whole new headlight assembly, $800 plus labor.

Funnily enough, the car got totalled shortly after, before I had decided to go ahead with the repair. Someone hit my SO as she was in a roundabout, and the impact moved the car several meters. Cracked the carbon fiber chassis. Estimated repair cost was 1.5x price of a new car.

So, never got the pleasure of finding out how much labor would have been for replacing the headlight unit. I'm assuming it would have been a lot more than for replacing a light bulb...

On my ford it's three bolts and two cables and you can take the headlight unit out, 5 minutes work tops. And that's with LED lights which should never be replaced (by the owner as they always need calibration). On my previous one it was even easier to let them stay in and move your hand in an awkward position to get the job done.

Nice. Perhaps it wouldn't be so bad, had the unit itself been reasonably priced.

Similar thing happened to me on my GTI, the Xenon bulb replacements weren’t too expensive but replacing it literally required disassembling a large portion of the front end of the car. I couldn’t believe it.

I have been quoted 500$ to fix a stuck gascap cover, because apparently the spring is inside and attached to the rear body panel, and would require a major part replacement.

Although im starting to suspect my mechanic is taking me for a ride

My neighbor has BMW z3. He has same story about its lights, which fail more than you'd expect.

Also: It's a hard top convertible. The mechanicism stopped fully opening or closing. Bummer. Two repair shops gave ridiculous quotes to troubleshoot and repair.

Using a scanner (generic OBD II scanner with BMW's specific codes), we narrowed the search. The ultimate fix was just two $15 switches. Being noobs, it took us some effort to detach and reattach the hard top.

I don't mind the labor effort (costs). It is a BMW after all. But it's ridiculous that these cars can't report their failing electronic bits.

$800 is steep.

I have a 2018 Subaru Outback. I got in a fender bender that caused the right front headlight unit to snap near the top bolt where it attached to the car. I found out when my car failed inspection.

I called the dealership and they quoted me $500 just for the headlamp. I went on rock auto and bought one for $250 and installed it. I had to take the front bumper off the car to install the headlamp. Passed inspection after I installed it though so it was all good. Just can’t believe they were marking up parts like that.

One Rockauto tip is to Google for a 5% discount code and enter it at checkout. I’ve never not found one.

I had no idea they did discounts Thanks for the tip!

Damn, crash tests should include repair costs for many types of minor accidents. Maybe we will see two piece rear bumpers and sacrificial headlight lenses.

right, the $42K Rivian fender bender was a particularly egregious example. https://www.theautopian.com/heres-why-that-rivian-r1t-repair...

oh my god.

what exactly were the rivian engineers thinking?

They weren't thinking about repairability. They were trying to get smaller BOMs and reduced assembly costs.