[moltuae]

Originally Posted by pete-p

The driver was very apologetic about it. Just an accident and no one was hurt.

My concern now is that the insurance company may write it off, there's a fair amount of stuff needing replacing on the front plus the hire car...

As I understand it, when the damage is light/cosmetic, the decision whether to write it off or not is yours to make, not theirs.

I was in a similar situation with a previous A8 I had about 10 years ago when some elderly bloke ran in to the back of me (without braking @ 30-40mph) while I was stopped at a set of temporary traffic lights. His car, a flimsy little Ford focus, was obliterated by the impact (engine pushed right back, almost nothing left of the front end) while my car had a cracked bumper, a small dent in the boot lid and a broken exhaust mount. Fortunately he admitted fault immediately (told me he didn't see the stationary cars because he was looking at some houses at the side of the road!).

The insurance company valued my car pretty low (something like £2.5K from memory). They estimated that the repair (inc. a brand new bumper, boot lid and exhaust) would exceed the value of the car so they were pushing to write it off. I don't remember exactly how the process worked (partly because I had someone deal with the insurance company on my behalf) but I ended up keeping the car and received £1600 from the insurance instead. Essentially I think you 'buy back' your car from them and they deduct it's salvage value from what they would've paid you to replace it. If dealt with correctly, as long as the damage is only light, no insurance write-off should be registered against the car.

In the end, I had the existing bumper and boot-lid repaired and repainted and the broken exhaust mount replaced for a little over £600, leaving me nearly £1000 in profit!