Driving along a very narrow road with a parked car to my left, I had to reverse back to allow another car to pass. Managed to hit the parked car and have made a bit of a mess of my Coupe. I am with Footman James and the man from Ageas (I didn't realise Footman James were only brokers) thinks it will be a write off. I have asked to keep the car anyway. It is insured for £2,000. I am not sure if this is what they will pay out. Do you think £2,000 would pay for the repairs plus a respray of the whole car?

Do you have an agreed value policy? If so, they will only pay out the full agreed value if they keep the car - if they allow you to keep the salvage, you’ll get less than £2k

If you don’t have an agreed value policy, they will simply pay out “market value” and you can probably guess what that means...

If you’ve damaged the rear quarter, it’s an expensive repair

Before making any plans, I would wait to see what Ageas come back with. Whilst you might be quite attached to your car, this might be the opportunity to get another one with a few less issues

The agreed value on the policy is £2,000. Do you think I could get another Coupe for that much Nigel? The prices have gone up quite a bit since I bought mine.

If I can avoid scrapping her I will, I just spent £500+ on the engine!

Thing is Nigel, I do know my car is really good mechanically. It is also apparently really solid underneath. I think it might be hard to find another vis and I am not sure I really want a turbo.

Very sad for you that this has happened,

Realistically your looking at keeping the car after pay out if you can, if its solid than it's a good future project/good future resource if you get another Coupe.

Sadly coupes have moved on price wise - and your probably under insured at that value. I've not seen a good coupe advertised at that price- that's NOT to say they are not out there, just I have not personally seen them advertised.

The insurers are likely right-the repair bill will be far more at a commercial insurer's body shop than the insured value-so they will right off.

Hope you get a good outcome.

MM

I would just get it repaired at a bodyshop. Source a second hand door theres loads about. The bodyshop should be able to pull and fill the rear quarter, get the whole side re-sprayed job done ... probably be about £600-1k. Or just keep the money and live with it as is ... as the driver, you never see that side anyway!!

What is the point of having "classic car" insurance if it's not an agreed value? When Footman James asked me the value when getting the quote, I assumed that would be the value they accepted. But now Ageas is saying they will only pay out market value. Which might not even cover the repairs.

I hate insurance companies, all the small print and hidden terms where they can get huge sums out of you if you cancel the policy, or if you are a day late with an installment.

Sorry to hear all your woes Annie

If you arrange an agreed value with your insurer you can expect them to request a signed statement from an established garage as to its condition and suggested value, also around half a dozen photos of the vehicle (front/rear/sides and insides).

If they didn't then it will only be market value I'm afraid. But keep the car and repair it bit by bit as suggested above and soon it'll be as good as before

Gutted for you Annie. But could market value work in your favour? Go through all the for sale adverts, here and places like eBay and gumtree.

Make comparisons ready to provide to insurance company. If they write it off, then to buy a coupe in a similar condition will cost X amount. X minus excess is what they should pay out.

Or I could be completely wrong and need to reassess my own insurance cover.

This is a good point, when deciding the value of my GTV, the insurance company looked at prices on Autotrader, and offered me £1k more than what I had insured it for because they couldn't get like for like.
At the moment there is 20v n/a for nearly £4k on there.

I thought so....

Sadly, unless you have specifically requested and negotiated AND evidenced an agreed value, then its always going to be market value. Your only hope is to ask Ageas to find a non-rusty VIS with a very good engine - they will then trawl the marketplace and find the true market value

Your problem may arise with a term called "betterment" - we know that your car had a lacquer peel issue, so they may find a decent VIS at (say) £2,500, but then they'll claim that yours needed £1,000 of paintwork, so they'll offer you £1,500, from which they will then deduct their excess

What excess do you have?

Looking at the pictures, its definitely repairable. A new door can be fitted in minutes and the rear quarter can be pulled, filled and repaired / painted

Your biggest challenge will be whether they let you keep the car if they pay out on it - if you can prevent it being written off, you'll get to keep it, but if they write it off, they are within their rights to dispose of it as they see fit (its theirs once they pay you)

Be prepared for them to offer you an paltry amount - when I write my first Coupe off, I was offered about £3k. After I had "discussed" the matter with them, they paid £6k....

Make sure you state you "should be indemnified for your loss" in correspondence and they'll know you're either in the industry or have taken professional advice.

The excess is £50 Nigel.

Thank you everyone for your replies and ongoing help with all my terrible bad luck recently!

They are sending out an engineer to have a look. I do hope it won't take long to make a decision because it is going in next week for the inner wing liner replacement, new front tyres, and tracking. I won't be letting her go for scrap, no way no how!

Really sorry to hear this Annie. Whilst the damage may look bad I think a decent panel beater could fix the rear panel quite easily and as has been suggested a replacement door would be a cheap and quick fix. You have talked about getting it plastidiped recently so if you are happy to do that as long as there is paint underneath it won't really matter about a colour match once fixed.

Get a valuation from the insurance company but don't accept their first offer, keep a look out for prices on anything similar and keep reference to the adverts so they can be used as evidence of the values. And say up front that you want to keep the car with a settlement figure if they think the repair is uneconomic, hopefully that could avoid it being classed officially as a write off.

The damage is minor. Personally I'd keep the door and get it repaired. You might spend an age trying to profile the new door to fit and the shade of red would likely be wrong. As a relative novice I'm fairly sure I could get 9/10 of the dent out. A proper bodyshop/panel beater would breeze it.

Regarding the insurance, as we'd be talking about relatively small amounts of money I'd suspect they'd be keen to settle with a cash amount rather than process the write off. Hopefully that'd play to your advantage.

I would agree with this.