Thank you everyone for the replies. I have decided to go the body shop repair route and will see if my local body shop can fix it. I have already spoken to the general manager and he is going to set up a meeting with his staff tomorrow to see what can be done. As suggested, it will involve some kind of resin/epoxy fix plus sanding and repainting. The repair process is probably going to be quite involved, so I will see if I can get permission from the body shop to take photos of the work in progress. When and if it is finally done, I shall definitely post photos.

If repairs fail, then I will go the route of a used diffuser (don't worry Paul for Tulsa, I haven't forgotten you).

But guiding my decision on this is my acknowledgement that I am not confident that this "accident" will not reoccur at a future date, so I am trying to minimize the expense as far as possible.

 

just have a body shop repair it out of your own pocket. I wouldn't want something to show up on Carfax either..... devalues the car.