seen an interesting car on autotrader, flagged as a Cat D write off but the photos make it look mint. £3k less than typical price for this make & model, age & mileage. go ahead & laugh, new shape Ford Kuga, 62 plate, under £14k compared to typical £16k+

what’s a Cat D write off?

http://www.autotrader.co.uk/classified/advert/201406044740103/sort/default/onesearchad/used%2Cnearlynew%2Cnew/page/1/usedcars/maximum-age/up_to_2_years_old/postcode/bd176qd/price-to/14000/radius/50/make/ford/model/kuga?logcode=p

Doesnt sound cheap enough.

Cat-D write means it would cost more to fix than it’s worth. IMHO most cat-D cars over a few grand aren’t priced well. You have to wonder how big a crash a £16k used car has to have to not be worth repairing to as new standard.

Another consideration for a Cat-D car is that an future claims for that car will be for a reduced value as the value has been registered as low by the last insurance company to pay out on it, so you are buying into a risky car. I believe they get valued as their scrap value before repair.

In short, barge pole it.

thanks trail-rat, really insightful

Cat D is when the cost of repair is greater than the car but not structurally dangerous, I reckon that sounds very pricey.

EDIT I had a car written off as a Cat D, ran it for a few years and then sold is as spares or repairs, basically worthless.

ok, cheers folks. ten foot barge pole it is

Cat D only if you plan to run it into the ground, 14k can put you into a whole load of worry free motoring, what you save you lose double when you come to sell on

Is too new and not cheap enough. – is that better ?

Id buy it when its 10 years old for 1000 pounds to run into the ground.

I wouldnt buy it at 2 years old and risk having to try selling it.

i was singing the praises of buying a cat d car today. but at £2k where your planning on scrapping it.

Over 10k and presuming you’d sell it on in a few years, i’d be a lot less interested.

Insurance payout in the case of writing it off again will be 50-60% of a ‘non-cat D’ car.

I get you TR, sorry

consensus is “not with someone else’s stunt thing”. cheers

You can write off a car as a CAT D if you knock off a wing mirror. If the parts are hard to get hold of its cheaper to payout the value than repair and pay for a hire car for 6 months.

Thats fine if it comes with a pre and post damage engineers report.

But you still have the more expensive insurance to deal with and the stigma when you try to sell it.

Id buy cat d but only at the bottom of the market.not worth it on somehing new and expensive enough id want it to remain fairly liquid.

£2k beyond my budget anyway 🙂

Cat C is repairs cost more than the value of the car, Cat D is if repairs are greater than financially viable to repair but less than market value of the car. Neither have reference to structural or mechanical viability, just that the insurance company found it cheaper to write it off.

I had a car written off as CAT C, repairs prices at £3k, I repaired it for about £500 & put it back on the road in a couple of weeks.

Holy thread resurrection!

We’re also looking at a Cat D car. For the same money as 2010 cars with 50,000 miles we have seen a 2013 with 14,000 miles. Prices are around £7k, the Cat D is about £3-4k less than others of its age and mileage.

Should we stick to older higher mileage cars? We will be running the car until it’s scrap regardless of which age we get, but with a 14,000 miler that scrap date is a few years further away, saving us a bit of money in the long term for stuff like a house deposit.

One thing that does pop up fairly regularly that I’ve noticed- either some CAT C or D cars have a haircut on mileage or they sit around for a year plus before they are repaired..

Personally if I was buying a C/D – I’d want to see pictures of the car before and details of the repair. you’ll often be told it was keying/vandalism/paint scratching etc down one side. The truth? Heres a google image search

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=CAt+D+cars&es_sm=93&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=wP49VZPRO4zvaqj4gbAM&ved=0CAgQ_AUoAg&biw=1062&bih=768#imgrc=_

Just bear in mind that when you come to sell it, the prospective buyer will post the same question on whichever forum they frequent, and will get the same answers as here – it’s too expensive, long pole. You’ll get really really low offers until you give in and accept one of them.

I had a BMW written off as a Cat D for a big dent in a door. Based on the cost of a new door + paint + fitting at BMW it was deemed uneconomic to repair. If I’d kept it I could have picked up a s/h door for £50 and carried on driving it. I had the option to do so, but the payout they offered was far more than I’d paid for the car 18 months earlier so I pretended to be a bit upset before saying “well, OK then”. And then did a little happy dance after I’d hung up the phone 😀

Also, and this is an unusual one, but a friend had a Cat C car once and it used to keep cracking the windscreen for no obvious reason. You really don’t know what’s lurking, hidden away in the structure of the car.

i bought a cat d tvr @ 25% its market value, just sold it 4 years later for what i paid for it, so some depends on the car it is

Bought a Nissan Pulsar GTiR as a Cat C, knew the history of it (very interesting) knew the exact circumstances of accident (very funny but not for original owner) had a load of bits sent over from Japan, knew the bloke who fixed it, had 4 months of lunatic fun out of it, sold at a nice profit to a kid in Swindon who wrote it off properly in less than a week 😥

Wouldn’t do it again just got very lucky.

As above – too expensive to be worth buying a cat D.

I bought a car from an auction many years ago, hadn’t see it in the flesh (was up in Aberdeen) and I got it for £400. I spoke to the auction place who were very good and the guy walked around the car while on the phone describing damage. I was also able to get hold of the insurance report. Turned out the car had all 3 keys, full service history etc etc and was written off due to minor scratches on pretty much every panel. Not something I was worried about on a £400 bangernomics car. That was a cat C as well. It’s now a terminal cat C with a bent chassis thanks to some pillock, if not it would still be running now. At least the insurance payout was pretty much exactly what I paid for it + transport down from Aberdeen 4 years earlier so apart from servicing and general maintenance it cost me £0.

Only things I would consider going over £10k for on a cat C/D would be a Land Rover Defender. Saw a TDCI 90 with about 400 miles on the clock go for £14k with a nasty front end concentrated impact (post or something) and some other dents. To get it up to an acceptable standard for a LR would not cost much but to put it back in factory condition would have been close to the value. Bare in mind it’s often not the exact value they use but a % of it as there is a salvage value too. In the case of the Defender the salvage value was very high so it only takes a few £k of damage to make it more cost effective to write it off.

Another thing to be aware of is flood damaged cars. Be very careful buying a write-off in the few months after major flooding if it’s not got obvious body damage as it’s highly possible it has or is going to have an engine go pop. On the flip side cars that have been written off and had new engines fitted already can be a good buy as they lower value due to being cat C/D but no crash damage to be worried about.

Hora those images are guff, a lot of those are quite obviously not Cat D as the damage is structural, some of the worst would be B at a guess.

CAT D can be stolen recovered. So something that after being nicked, and insurance subsequently payout for. Is then recovered, if nicked with the keys it may be mint. However I’d need to be sure of any reason with a price to reflect this.

CAT D can also include chassis damage. So unless you know what happened/pics you’ve absolutely no idea.

A repairer wont treat it as his pride and joy, he’ll do what ever is economically possible (cheap) to get it ready for resale. So you’ve no idea if its been done properly or if its been thrown together/polished and sprayed. MOT isn’t a fail-safe catch and a VIC test isn’t what you think it is…