[Closed] Stolen and Recovered Cat D? Opinions?

Cat D is where the insurance company don't think that it's economically viable to repair.

If it was the right price and you or a mate is able to make the repairs and get the various defective/damaged bits at trade, then I see no reason why you should steer clear. As long as everything else is legit.

Personally I wouldn't, purely from a resale point of view. I would buy if it was for keeps or a trackday car/bike as cat d can be hardly any damage, but it does put people of buying, so it would have to be cheap.

It would depend very much on the car. If it's old and ratty, then fitting a headlamp at book prices can write off the car.

If it's modern but unusual (a Skyline is a very good example), then you find two things - incredible parts prices from dealers, and wait times for parts to be shipped from the factory, leading to huge courtesy car bills. Again, these can easily write a car off - weeks of car hire at £50 a day, or worse if the driver insists on an "equivalent model".

I can remember finding a back bumper for one, in stock at an indie parts dealer for £400, compared to the far side of a grand from Nissan, plus shipping time from Japan. Made the difference between a repair and a write off.

Category D means its most likely to be nonstructural damage and should be relatively easily repairable. In this case the vehicle may have been economical to repair but for other reasons it was written off. For example where the insurer have to provide a courtesy car the time taken to repair the vehicle would mean that the courtesy car cost together with the repair cost would be excessive. In a category D scenario it is more likely that the insurer did not wish to repair.

I'd only consider one if doing a major rebuild.

As a "normal" car purchase I'd steer well clear.

LOL when I saw stolen recovered Cat D I had images of one of these.
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Someone dinged both of my doors earlier in the year , total cost of repairs was slightly over £1,000 using new parts by insurance company garage, value about £2,000. Garage said alot of insurance companies would have written off as more than 50% of car value. I would have been happy to buy it back if they had and used second hand doors etc.

If a unrecorded car in the same spec and condition is worth £5k, then you you don't want to be paying more than £4k for it. That margin will be about the same until they are both woth peanuts.
But some low end cars and silly cheap. A mate has brought and fixed a focus 1.8 Tdci for next to nothing, bumper bonnet and 2 headlights all from the scappy.

You don't know how long it was stolen for before recovered?

It may have been flogged to death. Trust me, a heavy right foot from some little crim canshag a motor remarkably quickly. I almost bought one when I worked for an insurer. I put a bid in. The guy who won the bid had no end of issues. Everything ie brakes, shocks, engine, clutch fell apart fromthe moment he had it.

Crims tend not to maintain stolen cars.

I'd avoid personally.

I bought a specialist converted from new, MWB, Merc Sprinter campervan with 26k miles for a fantastic price which was a Cat D. Am delighted with it. Took a lot of research to establsh exactly what had happened, including contacting previous owners, but was worth it.

Would I buy one? Lots of variables.

I'd need to see pics of the damage before and receipts for the repair.

It could be flood/water damage. NO THANKS. I also wouldn't buy a car at 30%-40% off regular prices. It'd have to be 50% for me and I'd have in mind that I'd be keeping the car longterm.

Some cars are written off due to say a side-swipe with wing/2 doors damaged. I'd have one of these.

In the trade we use a 50% valuation for recorded damaged/repairables. If it's got a glasses guide trade price of £4k normally, you'd be looking at a trade price for this car of £2k. There are a lot of nice cars about - the margin has got to be sufficient to make it worthwhile.

If a unrecorded car in the same spec and condition is worth £5k, then you you don't want to be paying more than £4k for it.

I would have been happy to buy it back if they had and used second hand doors etc.

Flood / Water damage is always written off by the insurer, on one of the proper categories that prevents it going back on the road. I was working at an assessor's during the Cumbria floodings, and the problem is that a) you do not know what's in the flood water (ie, health problems), and b) you can never clean the car up enough to be sure that no issues will appear from the result of flood damage (ie, water & silt in seams, dodgy electronics).

If a car's been water damaged and it's for sale, then it's almost certainly been taken outside the system.

Insurance repairs are meant to be as good as factory, with no further problems to surface (ie, rust).

Plus it'd be interesting to see how the car rusts. Not all cars are galvanised or treated throughout are they?

Morning all, interesting opinions but they're all now moot anyway as the car I was looking at has sold.

Cheers for the advice though.

No car is galvanised throughout. You can't galvanise a shell once it's been constructed, you can only galvanise the metal that you press the panels out of. The problem is that the heat would cause things to warp, and knock the shell out of tolerance.

The end result is that the welds will always compromise the zinc layer, and inevitably fixings will pass through the body somewhere. That's why seam sealing and good priming is a big deal for car construction / insurance repairs. And why modern cars go to such lengths to avoid fixings through the body - everything held on by plastic plugs, or screws into plastic plugs.

Even with good seam sealing, you'll end up with problems all over the shop. Any enclosed section would be a prime candidate for premature rust - door bottoms would probably be the first sign, as water drains off the window, through the door and out of drain holes at the bottom. Any silt would hold water and you'd get rust.

This being STW we need to continue discussing the subject post answer though 😉

No car is galvanised throughout. You can't galvanise a shell once it's been constructed, you can only galvanise the metal that you press the panels out of. The problem is that the heat would cause things to warp, and knock the shell out of tolerance.

e-coated these days.

Many don't even bother to spray the areas not immediately seen. The new Ford Ka for instance has an appalling amateur spray job.

VW have been doing it for years! It has the huge avantage of being doable to an entire assembled shell or part.

I'd be surprised if galvanised metal has gone completely from cars. I've not scratched anything under 10 years old to find out though.

Certainly for Golfs, the MK2 looks like it was e-coated, and the shells rarely rusted, the MK3 came along and was a bit worse for rust, and then later MK3 shells were apparently galvanised.

I think [b]EVERYONE[/b] missed the point here:

He was looking at a [u]STOLEN AND RECOVERED[/u] Cat D, it may not have even been damaged. Simply missing for a significant ammount of time can lead to this designation.

the cost of providing a hire car to the policy holder for a long period would, when added to the repair costs, total more than the pre-accident value of the vehicle

True but unless the car is unusual (parts rare) thats not really going to be one of the main reasons?

Cars that do have spare-part issues are cars that don't really sell well anyway (Mitsubishi Legnum)- and those are hard to repair anyway so are often automatically scrapped.

He was looking at a STOLEN AND RECOVERED Cat D, it may not have even been damaged. Simply missing for a significant ammount of time can lead to this designation.

Very true, but it may also have had the locks/windows smashed then run into a tree whilst 'outrunning' the police helicoper too....

 

I had a hire car for 4days recently. It worked perfectly fine when they gave it to me. It didn't when I handed it back. It was shiny looking still though.

I don't care what people say about treating other peoples property well. Hire cars are there for a reason.

True but unless the car is unusual (parts rare) thats not really going to be one of the main reasons?

Are you paraphrasing me there? It can happen. A fair percent of refinish work has to be redone, and you can have a comedy of errors situation. The bodyshop try to save a few quid and get it past the assessor, the assessor pulls tells them to refinish. Combine that with a part that needs to be ordered in, and that does happen with some parts even for run of the mill models from run of the mill manufacturers. Or even a bodyshop that's not getting through the work as quickly as they hoped.

It is far more common on the rarer cars, but it's not that uncommon on flashier stuff too - sometimes a Merc hire car will be demanded because the owner needs that for his job - director or whatever, and it racks up quickly.

Aye but there are a few points:

If you have a claim on an expensive car your premiums WILL go up higher depending on the size of the claim. They still go up even if you have protected no claims.
You pay extra for a hire car included on your policy?
You pay out in the long run in otherwords.

Its not in the insurers interests to just pay out to avoid a garage bill. Hence they have nominated garages who they have an agreement with on work/speed & price etc for the main?

Typically the enormous hire car charges are run up in no fault claims (ie, someone drives into the back of you, not your fault, all liability accepted by the other person and their insurer).

As it's not your fault, you're in a position to demand the moon on a stick, and everything is paid for by the other person's insurance. Generally you will employ someone like Helphire to demand the moon on a stick on your behalf. Doesn't matter if you're fully comp or TPFT.

I've never had a no fault claim, so I've no idea how it affects premiums, but it wouldn't surprise me if it did.

Err no. My understanding is the extortionate hire car charges are from 'accident management companies'. NOT Insurers.

My boss had a rear quarter-damage/needed a new alloy. At BMW Mini someone said 'would you like our accident management colleague-company to handle this for you? They are affiliated to us'.

Its a nice price-fix deal. We'll pay you a high rate for your used car stock to be used by us and we'll also take a slice of the rental..

The accident management company charged my bosses insurance 3k who then passed it onto the insurers for 2 weeks bmw mini car hire. Nice little racket.

Now I see why you have such a reputation as a numpty. I've worked in the field, explained to you how things work, and you now post saying "That's not how it works, this is how it works [outlining a slightly different scenario with a different management company]".

I never said insurers insist on giving you carlos fandango hire cars. They'll give you a Tata Nano if they think they can get away with it. If you or your claims managment firm have a good reason for needing a better hire car, they can't turn you down. But insurers will write cars off if they can see that car hire costs are going to put the bill beyond their write off level.

The flipside is that they often offer average Joe Public rather less than book price when they write off, but the people who have an claims management firm behind them get full whack.