Over in Ireland visiting my folks. Was out in the garage working on my bikes when I heard a thump followed by the sound of my car alarm.

Woman had backed her shite mondeo (covered in battlescars) into my mint low mileage 53 plate Volvo V40 – had it over half its life.

Photo below. The paint isn’t broken. Amazingly this is the first time in over 20 years of motoring that I may need to contact insurance.

Given the cars relatively low value…..say £1000, do I run any risk of it getting written off. I want to keep this car, with a perfect door again.

What is my easiest route to that outcome? Should I just push it out and polish the scratches out? Should I get another door from the scrappers?

Her insurers are likely to phone you and offer you some dosh, use that dosh to buy a new door?

Might be worth contacting one of those dent-removal companies.

In Ireland you say? Depending on which bit, insurance might be viewed as an optional extra.

yeah Id get that pulled out

I’d get the third party to ask a motor engineer to inspect the damage and negotiate a cash in lieu figure for repair.

Then you can do whatever you like – drive with a slightly marked older car and have a cash sum in the bank, or try a cheap but not entirely 100% repair and have some cash in bank, or organise a repair.

Doesnt matter if its a “write off”, as its your car, your a third party, there are no contractual rights of disposal, albeit a Cat A burn out or B of severely damaged body shell mean they may only be disposed of by licenced salvage agents. But this is repairable or cat D. – ie the salvage might be worth enough to make it total lossing a repairable car.

Job done

I’d try and avoid getting insurance involved. See if you can get enough cash out of the other driver for a second hand door and maybe a bit of trim (£100?). That’d be cheaper for them than a claim and easier for you. In fact if it was mine I’d just leave it but I can understand you wanting it fixed.

Car doesn’t need to be written off. Just insist you want to fix it yourself, which you;re fully entitled to do. Price up the parts, and send your estimate to the insurance company. In my limited experience, they seem quite happy to do that … it would probably cost them a lot more than to take it away, have it inspected, stored, provide replacement vehicle, etc…

They’ll probably just put a new door skin on for you, similar happened to my wife’s old car that was worth peanuts, and we thought they’d write it off.

How far it’s gone in it looks like its hit the side impact bar which means a garage would scrap the door and put a new one if its done through insurance. Thats what they did with my A class and the dent was similar to yours.

Get some costs if you do settle without the insurance company.
I had someone back into the drivers door on my last Defender and it cost £900 to sort as there were no S/H decent doors available and that was doing the work myself and getting a friend to paint it.

*reported*

*confused*

I reported some spam. It’s been deleted 🙂

2 things to consider:
– having it written off might not be a bad thing if you plan to keep it and re-sale value isn’t a concern. You can buy it back from the insurance company as salvage and pocket the difference between the payout and the repair
– this route would mean your insurance permiums go up, as you’ll be classed as a higher risk driver (as currently being discussed in this thread:linky

If the door opens just drive it. That’s a battle scar.A good repair will be too expensive based on the age and value of the car,

I do love threads that get resurrected by spammers. half the posters are confused as to why it’s suddenly reappeared and the other half just carry on where it left off months ago.