The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety recently conducteddamage tests on the bumpers of luxury cars at three and six milesper hour and found that in many collisions, repair costsskyrocketed up as high as $14,000.

According to the Institute, the four new tests used a barrierdesigned to mimic the front or back bumper on another vehicle plusfront and rear corner impacts run at three miles per hour and thefull-width impacts were conducted at six miles per hour.

Even when bumper systems performed adequately to minimize damagein low-speed collisions, the damage still had significantconsequences because of the high price of replacement parts. As anexample, the IIHS pointed to the Audi A4, which they said only haddamage to its bumper cover in one of the tests. However, the costof the cover alone approached $600, not including the labor toreattach it or the costs associated with painting it. And if thoseunique looking headlights get bashed in during these low-speedcollisions, watch out; they're not cheap, either. The InfinitiG35's headlight runs $847 to replace, and the Lexus ES is evenhigher, ringing up $1,046 on the claim total. Did we mention thoseprices don't include the installation charges?

“If an automaker is going to charge this much for a headlight,it ought to do a better job of shielding such an expensive partfrom damage in a minor bump,” said Joe Nolan, senior vice presidentfor the IIHS, in a release.

Of the 11 luxury cars tested by the IIHS, the Saab 9-3 was thebest, sustaining $5,243 in total damage. There were only three carsthat sustained less than $6,000 damage, while four would cost morethan $10,000 to fix. The Infiniti G35 was the ranked the worst,sustaining nearly $14,000 in damages.

“The Infiniti was a disaster, and even the Saab sustained waytoo much damage in these low-speed impacts,” continued Nolan.“There shouldn't be much or any damage in collisions at thesespeeds, especially to expensive and presumably well-made cars.There's nothing luxurious about shelling out thousands of dollarsto fix damage from a bump at a speed about like a brisk walk.”