In late March, a Peterbuilt semi hauling an oversized load rear-ended my wife's 98.5 SE. Fortunately, the collision was at a relatively low speed, so damage was minimal (i.e. the airbags didn't activate; the seat-belt pretensioners didn't even kick in). Nonetheless, the semi's insurance company declared the vehicle a total loss. We didn't want to get rid of the vehicle quite so soon, so I bought it back from the insurance company (Salvage title) and started fixing it myself. Here are the before-and-after pictures:
As you can see, I converted the 98's rear-end to the pre-98 style. It now matches my 96SE (except for the color).
The only work that I outsourced was the painting and a quick 'pull' of the rear trunk floor to realign the trunk latch. One of my neighbors happens to be a professional automotive painter (he even has a positive-pressure paint booth in his garage!) so that kept the paint costs relatively low. Considering that the factory paint is 8+ years old, the new paint matches pretty good -- I'd say it's only a tiny bit darker.
A local salvage yard had dozens of 'donor Contours' to pick parts off of -- the pre-98 trunk lid w/ spoiler and all of the tail lights cost only $180. I repaired the damaged bumper myself with some 'plastic welding.' The original spoiler had the integrated 3rd Brake Light, so I mounted a slim-line 15-inch LED 3rd Brake Light in the rear window (it really isn't visible until you step on the brakes -- then it's BRIGHT!).
