I agree Nige, many people I know would not touch a cat listed car and this dealer appears to want to hide the fact that they may be Cat listed, only mentioning Stolen Recovered, which I think is a con' and he is defo hiding the true picture.
I do get erked occasionally when people pen their suppositions without having full view of the actual facts (no offence Rob) but to understand the write off market fully takes a little time and a few visits to the salvage yards, whilst i wouldn,t myself advocate doing something that was very severely damaged , there's no harm playing around on the fringes of the lightly damaged stuff , that way you are in full control that you wont put something thats dodgy or ill repaired back on the market that shouldn't be
Andy was spot on with valuations being approximately 20% less for a Cat D and 30% less for a Cat C
The original idea of catergorising damaged vehicles was a good one and served 2 main purposes (a) to prevent the cut and shut scenario and 9b) to return/recycle cars safely back into the market place whilst at the same time aiding the insurance companies ro regain some of their losses, it was/is controlled by the insurance comapanies themselves, as its they that decide what catergory to place upon a damaged vehicle.
Sounds good doesn't it and it was for a few years , untill enviromental conditions ie ice snow floods caused extra-ordinary high losses , hence the need for greed to recover those losses as quick as possible rather than wait for the following years premiums to rise and regulate the profit levels as it used to be , Insurance companies started to move away from their very own guidelines when it suited them especially with high end expensive vehicles , now its quite common to see highend cars that should be Cat C at the very least with a D marker or no marker at all , thus they can re sell the vehicle for higher gains and puts a car possibly back on the market that possibly should not be their , blame is on the Insurance companies not the repairer or re-seller
You would actually be surprised how big the resale market is for Catergorised cars damaged or repaired , people are a lot more savvy now than they used to be , when you visit the salvage yards they are litterally full of joe public aswell as dealers
cars are getting written off really easily now , what with the advent of Gap insurance which reduces the insurance repair guideline costs of repair to return the damaged car back to the road (generally 40%) of vehicle trade value down to just 20%
For example a new lightly damaged £80K vehicle will have an approximate trade value of £70K , Taken out with gap insurance when new will have a repair limit of £14K , now take into consideration accident costs , tow charges, storage , replacement vehicle costs , assessor costs , parts , labour , wont take long to superceed that limit at maindealer prices .
So the car gets a Cat D marker and someone else buys it / repairs it with, possibly good used parts and back street labour charges and everyones a winner
I havent got a problem or see a stigma attatched to that , in fact i see it as a whole life times worth of plastic bottle recycling all in one go , hence automatic membership into the green party
regards loz
