Well, it depends. A lot of times a car manufacturer will source a part made by XYZ manufacturing, and that part will also show up in other cars. XYZ simply puts the car maker’s name on the part, but there’s no difference between that part and the XYZ-branded part.
You can get a lot of cheap parts from Rockauto this way if you know who made the OEM part - just go to Rockauto and find that manufacturer and you have an OEM part for pennies on the dollar.
I’d bet that the overwhelming majority of parts on any car are made by subcontractors (vendors) to the car designer’s requirements, and that the same part is then offered to the aftermarket as unbranded parts. For many parts, the design even comes from the part supplier and a “specification control drawing” is created from the supplier’s design to control future changes to those parts supplied to the car manufacturer. In some cases “source control drawings” are even created from the supplier’s parts design, limiting the purchasing choice to only the original designer/manufacturer of the part. That is standard design protocol throughout the manufacturing industry.
Note that other suppliers to the parts market will offer their own copies, but as shadow said, if you can find out who the supplier to the car manufacturer is, you can buy an exact replacement without the car brand and save some cash.
For $10,000, I’d stick with the current car. Perhaps you could take the car to another body shop and pay for an inspection of the repairs just for your peace of mind.
That is true for parts bought “off the shelf” from a supplier. Bosch fuel pump used in a Porsche, for example, same as used in a VW. Available aftermarket from Bosch. If the part is designed to spec and the car maker pays for tooling, for say, a fender, the supplier is usually contractually forbidden from selling it elsewhere. Same would be true for a molded switch assembly designed for Ford can’t be sold anywhere else since the mold tooling was paid for by Ford and wear to the tool should come from cranking out Toyota parts.
Now if a company 3-D scans a Lexus fender, creates its own low-volume stamping die and bangs out fenders that fit some Lexus, they are free to do that but it most certainly won’t be the same quality.
It truly is an “it depends” kind of situation.
I can remember when I installed by driving lights. I wanted to install them as the OEM “options” would be installed, to the same wiring harness and using the same circuitry. The circuitry consisted of a three-ended small wiring harness, a relay, and a switch. There was an unused plug taped to the side of the subframe to plug the actual light units into.
The OEM parts were outrageously priced. So, I researched the schematic, the wiring diagram, the relay, and the connectors. I even researched the connectors down to the actual Toyota connector part numbers. I went to the dealer’s to buy the connectors and was shown (on the computer) that they’re “not for sale”, I’d have to pay $150 for a small three-ended wiring harness. I searched industrial catalogs to no avail. Plus the cost of the relay (I could not find the commercial version of that either) and the switch (again, no success).
I ended up buying everything but the lighting units themselves from Toyota… at outrageous prices. But I absolutely will not butcher a car’s manufacturer-installed OEM harnesses, so I just “bit the bullet” and made the purchases. I ended up paying hundreds of dollars for parts that altogether were worth about $25 max.
Electrical connectors can be a serious pain. Many manufacturers have divisions or dedicated suppliers for those items sine they are such a critical part of the car. GM had Packard Electric, Ford had Motorcraft branded parts later becoming Visteon. Many German cars use Deutche connectors. Toyota likely uses their own design likely from a keiritsu partner.
Until relatively recently, this stuff was wildly expensive or just not available, period. Mechanics (or modifiers like yourself) have found the need for repair pigtails plus some like Visteon and Packard have been spun off from their parents so they sell small repair packs.
I can really understand the desire to avoid buggering up factory wiring harnesses, though.
It’s been my experience that Deutsch connectors are used in large commercial trucks, not German cars
For the record, I assume you meant the brand Deutsch, not “Deutche”
For German cars, I’m used to seeing Tyco, Bosch, Siemens, etc. connectors
Yeah, I was unfortunately unable to get to the level of the “spec control drawing” that would show the manufacturer’s name and possibly the manufacturer’s part number. It drives me nuts when I cannot do something simply because of the proprietary nature of simple electrical connectors. But, as I said before, I’m very much an advocate of not butchering the OEM harness even when I’m the one that has to pay a bundle to not do so!
The lights themselves I’m very happy with. They operate automatically in coordination with the headlight units exactly as the OEM lights would have, and they were a great help before I had my cataract surgery. Worth every penny to me. They may just have prevented an accident that would have cost far, far more than the cost of the parts. I’ll never really know.
One way to help you decide might be to turn the question around: Imagine you are shopping for a used Lexus RX, (not a cheap vehicle.) Would you buy one that was in a crash so severe it deployed the airbags? As a former owner of a 2011 RX 350 there is no way in heck I would ever buy one that was crashed like you describe. Why, when there are so many not having been crashed? If you have a way to move out of that crashed vehicle and into a CPO car that has not been hit, and has a four-year comprehensive warranty, I would jump at that chance to put the crashed one behind me. I assume the dealer knows your car was hit. The other members above offer good financial perspective, but the value of the 15K fewer miles and four years (from now) comprehensive warranty would be all I’d need to get the crashed car out of my driveway and then never have to worry about selling it on later.