Bent Frame

While the other posters are correct about the facts of unibody construction, I’m going to respectfully disagree that the car can’t be repaired satisfactorily.

Because the hit was in the front, beyond where the car’s unibody shell exists (where the front subframe is the structural member), it’s possible that the shell of the car is fine and the only damage occurred to the front subframe.

Here is a pretty good method for “eye-balling” unibody damage: look at the gaps around the doors, particularly at the rear section of the door. If you see larger gaps at the rear of the doors, or if the doors look out of alignment, or [especially] if the doors do not open or close correctly, it’s a safe bet that the shell has buckled at some point and THAT is a nasty bit to repair.

You can straighten or replace a subframe pretty easily. You can straighten a unibody that is just a little “tweaked”. If the front subframe is 2 inches out of square, I don’t think that’s unreasonable to fix. If that 2 inches is coming from unibody damage, I would say that’s unreasonable and has probably compromised the structure of the car.

The Mazda Speed cars are very cool, and actually kind of rare, so it would be a shame to see it go to the crusher, but it IS kind of a crapshoot when you get in to the “is it repairable” arena. 2" is quite a bit to be out, but I don’t think it’s impossible (would be nice to know the difference between the 8000 and 10000 dollar estimates.)