I’m hoping that people might be able to give me advice about my car.
On Friday my wife was hit by another driver who didn’t stop.We have just taken into get assessed for repairs and been told it will probably be written off.
So my question is what are my options and what will happen.The frustration for me is that while it is an old car it is in excellent condition.
Thanks for any help
Ed

You can buy it back and get it fixed up yourself or get the payout.

Simple.

If I buy it back and get it repaired will it effect insuring the car in the future?

Generally no.

Most insurers accept without question at the quote stage i.e. they treat it as any other car, you just need to ensure its fully fit to be on the road and have the paperwork to prove it.

Whats usually in the T&Cs is that if it is a Cat D/C car that the payout will be reduced if its written off again.

Depends on the category of write off. A & B are not allowed back on the road.

C suggests reasonable damage and would have to go through an extended MOT type test (can’t remember what’s its called) to ensure its roadworthiness.

D just means uneconomical to repair so you don’t need to do anything in particular to get it back on the road.

probably be written off.

Due to economic cost vs value or a technical / unsafe repair issue?

Written off due to cost.its a 05 Toyota Yaris with 130000 on the clock.

Well how serious is the damage?

Drivers side rear quarter,rear bumper and possibly drivers door too.

What’s the point of buying it back at that age and mileage ?

Buy another.

Don’t accept their first offer either.

Expect to get pennies for it if you try to sell it on in the future though. Though, at 130k mileage already I suspect it’s just gonna get wheeled to the scrappie once you’re done with it!

Such a shame because despite its age and mileage runs perfectly it’s been serviced every year and never given us any problems at all.

A quick look on eBay suggests a 2008 upto 50k three or four door FSH Yaris for £2k..

We have an 03 yaris and its had no trouble at all. I would try and repair it, i doubt there are many in the scrapyards as they dont seem to rust. I reckon ours is worth c 2k, a dealer offered 3k a couple of years ago against a new one. Those sub 1000 yarises are dogs, or get one as a donor car.

Last car I wrote off was offered back to me for £400. I didn’t take them up on it, the car was scrap I can’t belive it would ever be back on the road.

I’ve just had this. Car is still road worthy but insurers say it’ll cost more to fix (using original manufacturers parts and their preferred labour) than the value of the car. So I accepted their pay-off, kept the car and repaired it for a lot less. Makes sense for a work-horse with almost 130k on the clock and a rapidly depreciating value.

The insurance industry is a rip-off based on using new OE parts at inflated expense. Its why insurance premiums are so stupidly high, even on a cheap, small car and needlessly scrapping perfectly repairable vehicles is typical of our consumerist culture. Don’t repair things, just throw them away and screw some more of the planet in the process.

As above, if you buy the car back and have it repaired at your own cost, it will be Cat C or D and potentially worth less should you want to sell it, but should be perfectly safe to drive. It shouldn’t have an impact on your insurance premium either.

That said, I’d try to make sure that any damage is cosmetic rather than structural if you are going to buy the salvage. Check the rear wheels are still aligned for starters. Bear in mind that because you can use pattern or sound used spares and choose to ignore cosmetic damage, you should be able to repair the car far more cheaply than the insurance estimates.

That’s what we found when someone drove into our T5 and wrote it off last year anyway.

I would check how much you are likely to get for car before claiming insurance you may be cheaper selling for scrap and sucking the cost up yourself, (you might get sub one grand and cost you several hundred extra insurance for a few years)

Such a shame because despite its age and mileage runs perfectly it’s been serviced every year and never given us any problems at all.

We also have an 05 Yaris with similar miles that is hardly ever serviced and treated really rather poorly.
Ours has also never given us any trouble, and still runs perfectly.

Just find another that you like and buy it with the payout. They are bombproof 🙂

Ed2001 – Member

It’s an 05 Toyota Yaris with 130,000 on the clock

Unfortunately it has almost zero value.

Get quotes for a repair. Sold our 99 yaris for £500 Last year when my wife wanted a bigger car. We had owned it from new.

Danny – Categories have changed recently to make it clearer. In the old version C and D were pretty much interchangeable and there was no real indication of level of damage from it.
At that price haggle for a decent price and buy another, unless the damage is such that you could drive as is.

Such a shame because despite its age and mileage runs perfectly it’s been serviced every year

We had a Peugeot that despite it’s foibles was a great car to drive, and looked good. But the clutch went and wasn’t worth my while repairing so sold to a mechanic via eBay last year. Checked the dvla site recently to see if it was still on the road and it’s been sorned. So in essence is it really worth spending a load of money fixing a car that is due a major failure at some point soon?

We have an 03 yaris and its had no trouble at all. I would try and repair it, i doubt there are many in the scrapyards as they dont seem to rust. I reckon ours is worth c 2k,

£2k for an 03 plate Yaris, are you joking? On a private sale you would be lucky to get half that, if you could find a buyer.

Sounds like it’s still driveable? Take it in to a couple more bodyshops and see what prices they come up with before you make any decisions about buying it back from the insurer.

There can be a big disparity, I think it was something like £1k at the insurer approved repairer vs. £350 at another decent local place when someone went into the back of our old Fiesta.

If you get a payout in the region of the higher value and spend the lower amount, that’s maybe a fair compensation for the hassle and having a Cat D car going forward?

Had this with my old Focus. Minor front end damage, insurer said it was worth £1300 and would cost £1280 to repair, so were writing it off. Bought it back for £300, so I got £1300 less that, less £200 excess, ie, £800 + car. Cost me a new plastic grille, and new number plate and I left the cracked bumper, total £40, plus they required me to get it MoT’d to re-insure it. Kept another 2 years and sold it for £450, declaring it as Cat D. Go for it.

My BIL has a 2004 A4 1.9TDI which he’s had for a while.
He rear ended someone at low speed. Insurance wanted to offer him £2.5k for it and write it off.
The only damage was the bumper is a bit scuffed and scraped, the bonnet is bent and the headlight mountings are broken. All rads are fine.
He ended up keeping the car and getting £1800 from the insurance company, jammy git. I’ll repair it for him if he can source 2 headlights and a bonnet, so he should be quids in.

Well the OP car is probably worth £800 tops so they need to do the maths on it – OP – have you had a settlement figure from them? If so, go on to ask how much to buy the car back from them.

I reckon on £800 repair costs as a stab in the dark guestimate (assuming using salvaged parts and a back street body shop).

But all in all, I reckon the hassle wouldn’t be worth it – better off just taking the settlement and looking to buy another at the same price point.

I was in a similar situation a fews years ago – wife’s car was rear-ended (an old Vectra) but had been in the family from new, full service history etc and worth far more to us than the actual value.

Insurance company wrote it off & settled with us (you should gather evidence of similar vehicles for sale & use that to challenge their first low offer), we then bought it back for about 10% of the settlement value.
It was Cat D and we needed to have a Vehicle Identity Check done (cost £40 I think) but never had it repaired as it was driveable. We used it for another 3 years – no problems with insurance etc. In fact as it was pretty much worthless we saved money by only insuring it 3rd party.

You don’t mention whether yours is still driveable – I think that’s the key here. If you’ve got to have it repaired it might not be worth the cost & hassle.