A friend of mine has a 2012 Kia Sportage V6. His wife was driving and got hit. Somehow the police report was so vague that no fault was assigned and they are getting stuck paying the bill and sharing responsibility although if you believe them, that wasn’t the case.
Anyway, his wife was driving this car and someone ran through a red light at a high rate of speed and glanced off the side of her car at a pretty high rate of speed. The car was spun completely around and left facing the wrong direction in traffic from the impact. The passenger side doors are pretty banged up but open and shut normally. The car appears to drive normally but an alignment was suggested.
Due to the age and mileage of the car, insurance wants to total it. They are going to give him $7300 or so before any deductibles. He is also thinking about just buying it back and driving it as is with the totaled title until car prices settle down some. They want $1800 to buy back the totaled car.
He thinks he should get more but I looked online and it seems they are giving him a decent fair offer on this. I am not sure about the value of the totaled car being that high but it runs and drives so I don’t think it is a total ripoff either. It looks like the value of these cars really begins to drop after 120-130,000 miles compared to those with less than that amount.
Also, they live in the greater St. Louis area but this car is 2-3 years older than the ones that are so easy to steal and are being stolen and used in an epidemic of crimes so this isn’t part of that whole mess.
$7300 seem a very fair price. Were I in that situation I’d do what poster @ledhed75 above suggests, take the loot and use it toward buying a replacement car. The only exception might be if the owner has more time than money, and wants to use that time to take on a big project. Or if the owner is gung-ho to see if they can do it. I’d advise against a plan to just drive it in a wrecked condition. Likely will cause all sort of on-going & time-consuming problems. And liability issues if something falls off and causes an accident. A less than perfect repair job might be a reasonable compromise though.
Agree with the advice from others who said take the money and buy something else Another thing if you keep it will you be able to get insurance for it?
I think the doors close and seal properly. They are just banged up pretty badly and the cost of fixing it would exceed the value of the car. I haven’t see it in person either. I think the safety beams in the doors being bent would be my biggest concern if that happened.
I think that financially they may be stuck with the car for a bit so keeping it seems to be the only option. Hopefully they can move it down the road in a few months.
I’m having a hard time reconciling the passenger doors getting hammered at high speed and still opening and closing normally. Secondly, if a more or less glancing blow to the side can spin the car around, there has to be more damage than meets the eye. Driving it is one thing and the 4 tires still aligned, or capable of being aligned, may be something else altogether. If descriptions are accurate, I’ll bet that car is seriously tweaked and needing more than some door skins and an alignment…
The car seems to have suffered damage to the pillar too. Hence the “alignment” comment. They are emotionally attached to the car. I have a wife that every time we ditch her money pit car, cries for a few weeks… She names her cars.
Your suggestion should be to take the money and move on. What they decide is up to them.
Police report and liability are 2 different things. I’ve seen several accidents where the police didn’t assign fault, but the insurance did determine liability.
If someone ran a red light while trying to stop and they almost stopped before hitting the side of the victim’s car it could cause smashed doors and the victim’s car to spin around.
One thing that obviously insurance adjusters take into account is that paint work is expensive. I have a friend that had a 1996Ford Taurus station wagon. The Taurus was parked in the driveway at a friend’s house when another friend that was visiting, sideswiped the Taurus while backing out of the driveway. The doors opened and closed just fine and no glass was broken. Yet, the insurance company called the Taurus a total loss. The Taurus was old, but my friend bought it back from the insurance company. She was using the Taurus wagon as a second vehicle to haul her gardening supplies as she does the landscape work around our church. I would have driven the Taurus with the scaped doors, but my friend hunted down a body technician who did moonlight work and had the doors fixed.
A year later, this friend told me that her regular mechanic wouldn’t put the Taurus up on his lift because the undercarriage was too badly rusted. I think this is the reason the insurance totaled her Taurus wagon. My friend thought she would be o.k. just using the vehicle around town. I convinced her to junk the vehicle. I think the insurance company wanted to get the vehicle off the road.
Perhaps if we stuck to the original description it would be more beneficial than trying to conjure up scenarios in which something might happen?
almost stopped, hitting the center mass of the car would be a stretch to cause it to spin 180 degrees and only damage the doors. Then there is the completely different scenario described in the OP:
EDIT: My friend corrected me. This is a Kia Sorrento, not Sportage. It is his wife’s car so I have only seen it maybe twice in person and didn’t really pay much attention to it.
I think the plan is to drive the car for a bit and wait for prices to settle down. This car doesn’t get used for long trips and doesn’t get driven every day. They have another newer car without accident damage as well.
It might be best to move it on down the road but I haven’t even see the thing yet. I think it won’t be around too long but they will take the money, buy it back, and wait for a good deal to come along, then move it along.
The body shop did say it could be fixed but with the new doors and paint work, it would exceed 75% of the value of the car. It took quite a bit of going back and forth with the body shop and insurance so wasn’t a cut and dried decision. Either way, on a car of this age, such a hard bang could knock some things loose and cause odd gremlins to appear.
The body shop said an alignment was recommended if they buy it back but that a car getting spun around in an accident isn’t really as bad as it sounds. Again, I haven’t seen the thing. I am sure I can get him to send me a picture or two of the damage.
You have not seen the vehicle or inspected the damage, you don’t know what model Kia they own. Did they really ask for your assistance? Did you explain salvage title regulations to them? Will the insurance company sell them the vehicle? After the transaction with the insurance company the vehicle goes to auction. Seems like another case of meddling.