A couple of weeks ago someone has driven into the wife’s 52 plate Honda CRV, which was parked on the street outside our house. The bloke who did it was good enough to knock on the door & explain that he’d failed to give way to an opposing car, and fully admits that he is to blame. Fair enough, these things happen & he was good enough to stop.

There’s only panel & plastics damage but because of the age of the car it’s deemed uneconomic to repair, so the insurance company have told us it’s a write off. Now, the car was absolutely mint condition with very low mileage for its age. I’ve just spent £400 on the wheels refurbishing & £350 on a new clutch slave cyclinder. It’s also got a full Honda service history & we’ve run out of pages in the service book. In other words it was a bloody good car. Will it’s market value be adjusted for the condition & mileage or do they take a lowest figure, average, or upper figure? Or do they go along with Glass’ guide?

I’ve heard that we can accept market value for the car, but possibly buy the car back from the insurer at scrap value. Does anyone have any experience of this? Our way of thinking is that because it’s just panel & plastics damage we could run the car through winter before looking for its replacement next spring. Also, my wife needs a car for work so to have a few weeks without whilst we shop around is pretty much unfeasable. Any ideas what our options are etc?

Who’s insurance has made the offer? yours, or theirs?

It’s your car… so you don’t need to do anything in a hurry as it’s still road legal (assuming no sharp edges etc)

Theirs have examined it & said a it’s a write off. They haven’t offered anything yet.

As I understand it their “write off” means they can’t repair it for less than market value. They will be pricing a full repair at garage labour rates. If the damage is cosmetic, no sharp edges, not structural etc then see what they offer you as a write off and offer to accept the same amount or a couple of hundreds less as a full settlement.

Then either use as is or if any panels need replaced to make it safe and road legal get a quote from a small bodyshop before deciding what to do – telling the body shop it would be a cash job and not through insurance.

Similar situation a couple of weeks ago with my daughters car, hit by a foreign lorry (a little more damage than you describe) and deemed a write off. Older car, ’04 206 but in excellent condition fully (stamped up) service book inc. belt change last time, lowish miles @ < 60K and a 2 day old full exhaust. I was expecting a very low offer so had researched (Autotrader) the price we’d have to pay to replace as close as like for like as I could find. Very surprised that their first offer was bang in the middle of what I had found.
Only problem now is chasing the Albanian insurance for the excess she had to pay through the legal cover.

No sharp edges etc. And perfectly useable still.

The insurance company said that anything more than 60% of its market value is considered a write off, at which point they would offer the full market value as a settlement. We’re fine with that as long as it’s a realistic value that reflects condition etc. But we’d actually like to keep the car. We wouldn’t repair it as that would have it off the road too long. We’d like to have some money in the bank to put towards its replacement next spring, whilst at the same time having a car to run around in.

Has anyone bought the car back at scrap value (as I’ve heard you can)? Or is this a myth?

Yup, settled cash in lieu twice now. Did literally nothing (aside from re-MOT) and kept using the cars

What’s the market value of the car?

Similar happened to me with an old Astra – 3 times!
I was allowed to keep the car, no buying back. The other drivers’ insurers just gave me the value of the car to go away.
Bit of paint and some gaffa and the old girl was on the road for another couple of years until MOT failure meant I scrapped her.
Best car ever 😉 C Reg Astra estate. It’d done nearly 240,000 miles by the end.

Yep, often bought back the salvage for a pittance here< you just have to form V62 it for the logbook as the insurance destroy the current one, this is now
free of charge, no VIC check needed these days so completely hassle free

A friend recently crashed into a wall and wrote off his car. Got the insurance payout and was allowed to keep the car (didn’t have to ‘buy’ it back).

My car was rear shunted at the start of this year. They valued it at £7k and if the damage repairs exceeded 75% of their valuation it would be deemed a write-off. The repair quote came in at £7.5K….

When they told me it would be written off, I informed them the 2 other similar cars were going for £11k. They promptly decided to repair. It only needed a new boot, rear screen, rear exhaust and rear bumper, nothing structural.

I guess what I’m trying to say is there’s flexibility in the system, I suppose!

Good luck!

Searching auto trader & eBay it’s worth anywhere between £2k & £4k. There’s a few cheaper but for a low mileage mk2 with full history it’s averaging at £2.7k

I got rear ended in my first car which should have been enough to write it off. They valued the car at £880, and I ended up keeping the car and taking £800 (basically 10% off for the scrap value).

Had to pay £1.30 to get it through the next years MOT. 😀

At the end of the day it’s your car, not theirs.

So tell them that you’ll accept a cash payment for their value of it as a write-off minus the scrap value of the car.

Put the money in the bank, apart from spending what you’ll need to keep the car ‘legal’.

So as an update; the settlement is about £2k & we keep the car; it’s a category D write off.

Does anyone know what I need to do to be legal? Is it just a further MOT or is more needed? I know VOSA used to inspect them but they no longer exist.

Cat D write off – fix it – insure it – drive it. That’s all you have to do.

Mildred , I’ve just done my wife’s corsa 2 weeks ago . Repaired it and new mot .job jobbed . No Vic check needed anymore either

You don’t even need to repair it as long as it is safe/roadworthy and the MOT can wait till it is due. Almost exactly this time last year someone drove into the side of my saab and it was written off cat C. Their insurance paid out plus I kept the car and drove it for a further 3 months without doing anything to it until I found a replacement car.

Well today some bright spark just side swipe my parked car outside my flat while I was at work. Front bumper badly scratch and wheel arch badly dented near the front light … dammnit … 😡

You may need an MOT to keep your insurers happy, I drive a Cat D car and Admiral wanted an MOT doing (despite it being an 18 month old car) to insure it. They didn’t want to see anything else, and didn’t charge any extra.

Chris Knott insurance, who I’m with now, didn’t want anything doing.