My car came with a frown on the hood. The story is that the first day the PPO got it, he tried to open the hood and learned that the hood latch was missing when it flipped all the way over.



I'm curious if anyone has any thoughts about how to repair this. I'm a bit nervous about just whacking on it with a hammer, as it may turn out bumpy. But, as it is fairly long and shallow, it seems like a normal dent puller wouldn't work well. Anyway, suggestions welcome.

Yeah, you can't just start whacking on it unless you really know what you are doing. I did that in my earlier years thinking that's how you repair dents, but found there is an art to professional bodywork if you don't want to compensate with loads of filler, so I have no tips to offer in that regard. But I did the exact same damage when I was restoring my Spider. All the hardware had been removed for replating, and I had forgotten about it and lifted the hood one night for something and let go and the hood kept going, swung around and put a nice crease across the front just like yours. I elected to replace the hood since I was getting the car painted, but the shop ended up fixing it (they said it was easy) and using on another Spider.

As toyfiats alluded to, there are super talented body repair guys who know how to work metal so that the damage looks like it never happened. I am not such a person.

I'd find a good body shop and see what they suggest. The easiest thing would be to sand it down, remove the crease as much as possible, fill in with Bondo, and repaint. There may be other (better) options.

Don't whack on it with a hammer, as tempting as that might be. You're right, it will just leave dimples and may end up looking worse.

-Bryan

Before trying a regular body-shop I'd try a paintless dent repair (PDR) place. Looks like there are paint chips that they won't address but you might get 90% of the way to normal.

PDR is not done by traditional body shops and they won't mention it as a possibility. On my kid's car I had a complexly wrinkled fender that would have been $1500 at a body shop fixed by a PDR place for $200. I doubted it, but it looks like new and it took three hours.