As some of you may know, I'm a collision damage appraiser by profession.
Did an assignment today on a 2010 HHR. It got hit pretty hard in the rear. Caved in the liftgate, bent the bumper assembly down, damaged the muffler and tailpipe, closed up the gaps on the rear doors to quarters.....

The shop had not gotten around to doing any teardown, so I couldn't do a real detailed inspection / estimate, but we did notice this:

The rear body / crossmember (back panel of the body, below the liftgate opening...) was pushed in enough to dislodge the battery from its correct position. The battery came into contact with the spare donut and was split open on the top of the case. Electrically, the car was 'dead', so the shop put a charger on it. The battery started out-gassing real bad - puffs of smoke, and was probably in danger of starting a fire if we wern't around.

Soooooo.....
If this happens to you, CHECK THE BATTERY!!!!!!
Otherwise, you might end up with a car-b-que......

 

Just wondering why someone would put a charger to a split open battery?

 

Im guessing they put it under the hood to jump it and left it run for the alternator to charge the battery?

 

Yup - at that point we had not yet discovered the actual battery problem......

 

Be safe sleeper.

 

Sounds to me like the body shop didn't have much experience with HHR's, the first thing I'd check after a hard rear end collision would be the battery. Sounds like an awful lot of deformation to the unibody on that one, maybe fixable, but I'd always be leery of one that had a shot that hard.

 

They've got it torn down now, so I'll be going back Monday for a second look.