Bought a cat c car, didn't know, Insurance?

bb169

Just looking for some advice really.

Bought a car last weekend from someone we knew & stupidly didn't do a hpi check on it.

Had my brother (mechanic & mot tester) look at it on fri night & he said it looked like the gear box & engine had been out, this got me suspicous so I did a HPI check on it which came back as it being a Cat C write off last May. (now repaired & vic checked I am assuming as it has no warning marker on the dvla website & has a valid mot.

Now I know that I really should have checked it before buying it so it's my fault however will this have any insurance complications for me?

I have e-mailed my insurer informing them of this new found insurance however I was wondering if anyone has been in a similar situation & whether the previous cat c write off has affected the insurance.

Thanks in advance.

rev_henry

You've done the right thing in contacting the insurance. They may not care, they may refuse cover, or anything in between.

If they refuse cover, I would have thought you would be covered ok for the period up to when you've found out, as before then you couldn't have told them as you didn't know.

Clioterus

Did you not check the log book? It should be written on the front about it. You'll get cover they will just pay you less out on any claim. Ideally you will have paid less than market value?

bb169

Clioterus wrote: »

Did you not check the log book? It should be written on the front about it. You'll get cover they will just pay you less out on any claim. Ideally you will have paid less than market value?

The log book is with the dvla getting the previous owners details changed over therefore we do not currently have it, nor did we see it prior to taking the vehicle, we thought we could trust them as we knew them...how wrong could we be!

Didn't really pay less than market value for the vehicle however it does have a couple of modifications that I suppose could answer for the price we paid.

I shall await my insurers reply, I have checked the small print on the insurance policy & it no where mentions anything about previous cat c vehicles so I am hoping it will be good news, I have 3 months cover left on my current insurance!

Clioterus

Every car I have owned has been bought from a salvage auction cat c's and d's and I've never had trouble insuring them. If it gets stolen don't expect full market value back, apart from that everything will be ok.

Clioterus

What's the value of the car? If its cheap a cat c could mean very little damage. If its an expensive vehicle ask your brother to check where its been damaged and make sure the repair is up to standard.

hartcjhart

I would woryy more about the modifications and how they will affect the insurance rather than the cat c marker,I assume you have informed the insurance about the 'mods'

dacouch

There are a few companies that will not offer cover for previously written off cars eg Swift.

It tends to be during the quotation process that they mention whether the car being previously written off cars are problem, often it's done by an assumption to the effect of "I confirm the car has not previously been written off".

The modifications are more likely to be an issue.

As others have mentioned, should you write the car off it will be valued less than a non previously written off car

redux

I would dare to imagine that the insurer will already know about it, as they'd check databases when you applied.

But in any case it's worth telling them.

If they didn't know, it might turn out you would need to move. My insurer is one that does not want to insure category C or D write-offs, but there will be others that don't apply any loading at all.

bb169

Clioterus wrote: »

What's the value of the car? If its cheap a cat c could mean very little damage. If its an expensive vehicle ask your brother to check where its been damaged and make sure the repair is up to standard.

£1500 is what we paid. We are going to get him to give it a good check over anyway for piece of mind :-)

hartcjhart wrote: »

I would woryy more about the modifications and how they will affect the insurance rather than the cat c marker,I assume you have informed the insurance about the 'mods'

All modifications declared

The insurer is Equity Red Star if that makes a difference.

artbaron

A cat C will drastically reduce the value of the car. Modifications will not offset this as mods very rarely add value. In fact, mostly they reduce value too.