I know there are many of you out there who feel like one automotive kink is enough for you, and I respect that. But only a little. That’s because I’m greedy when it comes to automotive fetishes, and I want to hungrily develop as many as possible so I can get lavish hits of dopamine or whatever happy fluids course through my mind-flaps when I see a car with exciting taillights or indicators or bumpers or space utilization or whatever. I love it, love it all, and I am currently in the process of developing an all-new automotive fetish: color-coordinated rubber bumper impact strips. Is it hot in here? It feels hot in here.
I’ve realized that most of my automotive fixations and fetishes tend to skew towards the small and strange and foreign, well, foreign from my American-based perspective. This particular one, though, is extremely American, as the only examples I can think of are all American cars, mostly from the 1970s and 1980s. It’s a strange little design detail, something that adds a nice little bit of zing to a pretty utilitarian part of a car, and there’s something about this detail that somehow feels almost, I don’t know, comically snazzy. Color-coordinated rubber bumper impact strips feel like the automotive design of something being too, were it fashion, matchy-matchy, a belt matching the shoes matching the hat matching the glasses matching the earrings matching, oh, the colored contact lenses worn under the glasses. It’s that.
[Editor’s Note: Holy crap, I just realized I wrote this article back in 2018, well before I was given a free Nash Metropolitan by a local Los Angelino!:
It was meant to be! -DT]
Since modern cars don’t really use rubber impact strips anymore – to their detriment, as these little chunks and strips of rubber actually made cars more forgiving and prevented a lot of minor accident damage – it may be worth explaining just what the hell they were.
Rubber impact strips are pretty much just what the name says: strips of rubber, placed on bumpers, designed to absorb small impacts, protecting the (usually) chrome bumper itself from getting damaged or dented or scratched. They’re almost always made of a tough, pretty hard and resilient black rubber. They could be found on so many cars built in the 1970s and 1980s. So, so many. Almost everything with bumpers had some form of black rubber protection strips on them or on their bumper guards or overriders.
Very rarely – which is what makes this fetish so special – a company would decide to up its game and make color matching rubber impact strips. I think Ford and their brands (Lincoln, Mercury) were the most avid practitioners of this under-appreciated art form, using it to add some extra presence and refinement to cars like the Diamond Edition Lincoln Continental Mark V:
Dear lord, look at that butterscotchian vision! Just imagine how you’d feel if you, like beardy over there, got all dressed up in your matching butterscotch coat and went out to your Diamond Jubilee Edition Continental Mark V, also a completely in butterscotch beige, and found that your bumper impact strips were the same color as roofing tar? You’d be livid! What are you, a coal miner? Did you buy tractor or a fucking Lincoln?
Ford also used it on the Thunderbird, and I feel like there’s other Fords that were treated to this as well. GM, of course, is not going to be left out of any gaudy, overdone accessorizing fight, and they had colored rubber impact strips, too, perhaps most notably on the Chevy Chevelle Laguna, which offered multiple colors:
Those white ones must have been a nightmare to keep clean, but they sure do look classy, right? I think I like the orange ones on the left better, as they keep the orange stripes going over the bumper. It’s all so good.
Chrysler came into the color-coded rubber impact strip game a bit late, in the 1980s, and used the colored impact rubber strips on plastic bumper caps instead of the more traditional chrome bumpers, making for an even more monochrome look. Chrysler did this on the K-Cars and their more premium siblings, and had a really intense matchy-matchy thing going on with matching hubcaps as well. They got really, really into it.
These plastic-covered bumpers were a harbinger of things to come, as chrome bumpers with bumper guards and impact strips soon faded away, lost to painted plastic bumper covers that cost an assload to fix and look like crap after even the slightest bumps or scrapes.
Rubber impact strips, whether the color of carbon or a robin’s egg, would never have let that happen.
You’re all welcome to join me in my new fetish! In fact if you can think of other members of the color-coordinated impact strip family, I urge you to tell me about them in the comments! Let’s obsess together!
Do you lock the door so your wife doesn’t walk in when you write these articles???
she knows what she signed up for
Can we get the Bishop to reimagine what actual bumpers would look like on today’s most popular vehicles?
I wonder what the modern crossover would look like with ye olde 5mph bumpers and impact strips.
On my 1978 Lincoln Towncar they all but disappeared, it was silver with gray vinyl roof and the trim pieces the same, a red pinstripe tied in with the red velour luxury coffin interior.
Yep, before you even got to it, I was thinking Ford. It looks pretty good on the Mark V and the T-bird up there, and note how they even carried it subtly into the turbine wheels. Those were a weird contrast to the rest of the car, but overall I think Ford did Malaise-era baroque with the most commitment, even though I kind of hated the whole vibe.
I also hated the color Ford called “Saddle” that looked like spray tan slathered over vinyl roofs, interiors, the little cushion-y patches in headlight covers, and yes, rubber impact strips. It clashed violently with all but the most neutral colors, but that didn’t stop them.
How about instead of just the impact strips the entire rubber bumper? I’ve seen many late year rubber-bumper MGBs “restored” with body-colored bumpers that the owner thought would look nice. Probably figured just easier to do when you’re getting the car repainted anyway. I think they just look a wee bit off like that.
I am lucky my ’67 Citroën DS is black, so the 4 rubber blocks protecting the front and back are actually colour coordinated! 🙂
My ’62 356 has thin black rubber/plastic inserts in chrome/steel trim lists on bumpers and sides, and they are a nice contrast to the Silbergrau colour of the car.
My ’71 VW Convertible has the usual post ’67 VW black ones. But the car is red with white top, so it would look funky with red ones. Thanks for inspiration! 😎
The 1989 mk2 Toyota MR2 was launched with a black plastic impact strip running all around the car at knee height except for, maddingly, the low, pointy front bumper where they would have been most useful. So what, right?
There were several revisions to the mk2, and from revision 3 onwards those impact strips were colour coded (also the car got four round rear lights which is the correct shape and number for all rear lights). Matchy matchy, but in an era of plastic bumpers of course things we’re going to match.
However my mk2 MR2 was a rev2 (1992-1993) which as well as introducing bigger wheels, bigger brakes and handling that was less inclined to kill you, also introduced a light blue colour option 8J2 Ultramarine Blue Mica Metallic. This came with the impact strip in a contrasting but complimentary darker blue.
The bubble era found a third option between black and colour matched. Those crazy bastards.
Nobody but nobody took body colored bumper strips further than Pontiac did on their Trans Sport and Aztec.
WE NEED MORE BUMPER!
(Will Farrell)
Oh gawd yes. This is titillating. *testing new comment spam filter*
Adjacent to this. People like to hate the US-spec Mercedes SL (R107) because of its big bumpers with bumper guards, and its dual sealed-beam headlights.
Those people are wrong. The 5-mph bumpers and headlights make it the most beautiful car ever made. The Euro-spec models are its uptight fraternal twin brother with his huge Oscar Goldman glasses and perennially grouchy attitude around you because you always move his things and never put them back exactly where they were. You don’t even sort your records alphabetically by artist and then chronologically by date of release. You’re a hooligan with your silly eyes and giant chrome mouth guards and he does not like you one bit.
Thank you. I have always been made to feel like a low pervert for preferring the sealed-beam look on these (and the W123, for that matter).
You people ought to be ashamed of yourselves. Get back in the fed-bumper closet where you belong.
It’s OK to be wrong
“Color-coordinated rubber bumper impact strips”
Say that 10 times fast. Lol
Kind of like: Rubber baby buggy bumpers 😉
That 10 times fast. That was easy.
They weren’t color-coded, but my second car, a 1977 Chevy Malibu, had rubber bumpers, including the vertical “rams” on the front. I had my first auto accident in that car back in 1982. I had worked a double shift at the Western Sizzlin’ Steakhouse in Pensacola, FL, and was on my way back home around lunchtime when I fell asleep at the wheel. I suddenly awoke to see a small pickup truck completely stopped in front of me. I slammed on the brakes but the wheels locked up and I skidded right into the back of that truck. I hit it so hard that the whole rear bumper of the truck was folded up underneath it. Luckily I had my seatbelt on and that Malibu was a tank. The only thing wrong with my car was that the rubber caps on the vertical rams had popped off. I picked them up and popped them back on. I was a little sore, but the fact that I was so relaxed at the time of the wreck probably protected me from anything more serious. The driver of the truck was OK too and was amazingly laid-back about the whole situation. When the police came, they decided that the accident was caused by a patch of wet sand on the road. I didn’t mention that I had been asleep, so I got off without even getting a ticket.
For all the malaise era defensive article Torch comes up with, I’m surprised he isn’t rocking bell bottoms and sideburns.
I think he has a closet filled with leisure suits and color-matched loafers.
Jason “Leisure Suit Larry” Torchinsky
He probably has a power rotating tie rack in his closet, but he uses it for gold chains.
Torch, I’m with you on this fetish, and in particular its ultimate expression — the Buick LeSabre Palm Beach edition:
https://blog.consumerguide.com/cheap-wheels-1979-buick-lesabre-palm-beach/
What about the color-matched rubber-ish side strips that you still see on some contemporary vehicles? Do they count? Some come directly from the factory, but I think some are also dealer-installed packages supplied by the factory.
And some of those are just terrible, like this not-uncommon work of sheer horrendousness from the early 2000s: https://www.mustangspecs.com/2000-mustang-production-numbers/
Two words; Citroën Cactus
At least they chose the right name.
Holy crap, that Thunderbird in the topshot looks like it could be my friend Scott’s car! He has owned the same ’79 T-bird, in that color, since 1989.
???? Hit me with your impact strip! ????
daddy….
!!!! Hit me slowly, hit me quick! !!!!
!!!! Hit me, hit me, hit me! !!!!
I’m not sure if I should be surprised to find people familiar with Ian Dury in the comments here.
Maybe Autopians skew older &
hipperweirder than those at the German lighting site.I’ve always liked these too, including side rub strips that were body color or more commonly matched the color of the vinyl top inevitably on the same car.
Forget the bumpers I love me those sexy headlight covers. Oh ya so vertical and so not needed but very sexy! This is my kink sorry.
This is a good kink. I loved the late ’80s/early ’90s version of it, the half-lidded affairs that covered up only the upper part of the light when down. Think 300ZX or Geo Storm.
Some Pontiac Sunbirds of that era had the half-lidded headlights too. I’d love me a turbo GT convertible from ’89 or so.
I’m not the biggest fan of chrome, and now I’m sort of wishing my car had chrome bumpers to attach some body-colored bump strips to.
As an aside: do black cars get a pass for already having body-colored bump strips?
You could tell Grandma always pulled her fancy Kcar into the carport by the way the rear rubber was noticeably cloudy in just 2-3 years. A year or two later, it would start to droop
As fetishes go I prefer turbine wheels.
I esp. enjoy the incongruousness of them on the otherwise baroque Lincolns. And the gills.
5 MPH bumpers were a crime against humanity. Just ewwww.
Incorrect
Word!
Ah, like my ’75 Ford Elite, where the strips were color matched to the puffy vinyl top
Ye gods, now you’ve made me remember. The car I took my driving test in was my parents’ Ford Gran Torino Elite III, red with white vinyl. That car sucked big time. I couldn’t drive stick (yet) so my 70 Beetle was out of the question. I fixed that quickly.
Hated that damn car.