Shall I treat myself to a nice car?

BaldySmurf

brazilianwax wrote:

Just be careful - I've seen a lot that have been smashed up due to the driver thinking they can push the S2000 further and further.

Yep - there are plenty of Cat D's out there!

manhattan

ashcarrot wrote:

After seeing a 2 bed small manky bungalow get relisted £5k higher at the bottom of our road I'm tempted to just buy a supped up Audi ... A bit disheartening to see those rises still happening.

get a new Audi S6, i saw one yesterday sounded very nice whilst accellerating that thing roars!

epz_2

BaldySmurf wrote:

Yep - there are plenty of Cat D's out there!

i bought a cat c motorbike that had been repaired and never had any problems with it, granted bikes get written off because the plastic bits can cost a couple of grand new and most bikes drop down to the 5k mark pretty quick but it isnt always a daft idea to buy one.

i worked at a insurance assesement place for a few weeks and their rule was to only use maufacturers new parts, main dealers and write off anything that had the potential to get expensive in terms of labor or was over a pretty low % of the car value.

i was plenty of situations with 5 year old beemers & mercs which were their owners pride and joy get written off for minor bumps, the smart owners were the ones that took the cash settlements and bought back the cars at a massivly discounted rate. then all they had to do was tike it to the local body shop who would use refurb/generic parts and walk away with the same car and a wad of cash.

in a situation like that you can negotiate them down in sale price and sill get a decent machine, though i would run away from any fiber glass bodyied car since even a minor bump can affect structural integrity. not much of an issue for me really though since i only really like big lumps of classic german metal.

brazilianwax

Didn't mean the OP should be careful when buying one (although obviously he should!) - more that he should be careful driving one! They have limits and if you push them past the limit the car can get trashed!


Thought Cat D was a write off because the car is unsafe??

manhattan

epz wrote:

though i would run away from any fiber glass bodyied car since even a minor bump can affect structural integrity.

does that apply to aluminium cars too?

Alan_M_2

brazilianwax wrote:

Didn't mean the OP should be careful when buying one (although obviously he should!) - more that he should be careful driving one! They have limits and if you push them past the limit the car can get trashed!


Thought Cat D was a write off because the car is unsafe??

cut and pasted from autocheck.co.uk:-


An explanation of the categories of write-off are listed below:

Category A
A vehicle which should have been totally crushed, including all its spare parts.
Category B
A vehicle from which spare parts may be salvaged, but the bodyshell should have been crushed and the car should never return to the road.
Category C
An extensively damaged vehicle which the insurer has decided not to repair, but which could be repaired and returned to the road.
Category D
A damaged vehicle which the insurer has decided not to repair, but which could be repaired and returned to the road.
Category F
A vehicle damaged by fire, which the insurer has decided not to repair.
Theft
These vehicles have not been recovered and ownership rests with the insurer who made the total loss payment. They are able to repossess the car as soon as it is identified, even if it has been bought innocently.

Vehicles categorised as A, B or C require a VIC test before the DVLA will issue a new registration document. This will then be noted on the V5C. See https://www.dvla.gov.uk for more information on VIC testing.

epz_2

manhattan wrote:

does that apply to aluminium cars too?

not as such, fiber glass is basicly glue and glass fibers which in an impact delaminate and lose a massive ammount of structural integraty, its also notorioulsy hard to detect since it can have the same shape.

aluminium does present other problems, its a metal so can be welded and doesnt have the same probs of catstrophic failure but its a pig to weld, that means thers a reduced chance of them doing it properly and some of the new alloys in motorbike frames etc are formed in really odd enviroments like argon to increase strength.

if it were an aluminium pannel then no probs since it would have been replaced or beaten back into place, chassie and i would probably walk away since its likely been pretty big crash anyway and you would always be concerned with wheel alighnment etc.

Tiglet

Why not keep the jalopy while it's still got the right number of wheels, and rent something more interesting for the times when you can get the most out of it? That way you're not committing yourself to the full cost of buying or leasing it even when it's just sitting gathering dust, and you can have something different each time if you want.

PJD

that's an interesting idea tiglet.... - when i think of renting cars, - i usually think of a-b mondeos, or the other extreme, - Ferrari's etc..

presumably you must be able to rent out inbetweenies...

BettiePage

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