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Car is fully drivable tip top, nothing is patched up, but I can patch up if needed. I’ll read the policy and will notify if needed.
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Oh no!!! Sergey I feel gutted this happened, yours is such a lovely car and a rare colour.
Do try to find out if it can be properly fixed by a good body shop. I hear aluminium can be welded if necessary. |
This is really gutting to see pal :(
I’ll keep my fingers crossed for the best outcome. My previous s8 was written off as a Cat C with less damage after being rear ended and I had hell trying to get a decent value for it. Andrew has given some sound advice which I wish I had done last time. Good luck +++ |
I'm not in any sense up to date on current insurance practices, but my late father used to work for The Prudential so "back in the day" I did know a fair bit about the business and how not to get "railroaded". He was very good about being fair to his customers.
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Gutted for you. So much time and effort has gone into that car.
I echo Andrews thoughts re you should let the insurance company know as soon as possible. Sadly, I think it will come to be a right off. To give some context, my RS6 had a knock on the motorway and had that rear quarter panel replaced in 2017. It was a proper glass out strip down to metal and redo it to factory standard at an Audi approved Aluminium body shop. £12K later all was well. Excellent in fact. The job was 100% spot on. UK insurance will typically write a car off if its going to cost more than about 60/70% of its value. Knowing how keen you are for perfection, I don't know if there will be a cost effective way to get this sorted back to the condition it was in. I am sure though that if it comes to settling for a total loss write off you will be in a strong position to argue that the car is in considerably above average condition, and will be very difficult to replace like for like, but sadly book price of the 'A8' will be something they probably won't budge far from easily. In any case, you should negotiate buying the car back from them as they typically go for about 10% of the agreed value I believe, which would make it a no brainer given the excellent condition of it.... I hope you get it sorted...... |
Sorry to hear of your incident notorious, it's heart breaking when your pride and joy is damaged through no fault of your own. Some great advice has already been given so and I hope they repair it for you.
A re-shell will be no doubt be expensive. If the car is sentimental and perfect for you then be adamant that you want it repaired. If the worst case scenario does happen and it is written off, you could buy it back (if the price is right) and use the money to put it right. Obviously will be a Cat D but if you want to keep it you may have to accept that. Quote:
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Gutted :-( I know how much you love that car and I was looking forward to making it perfect for you.
That is most definitely an insurance write-off. They won't even contemplate trying to repair it with that sort of metalwork damage. That's way beyond Dean the dent guy's talents too - the metal is torn, and the weld seam to the lower rear panel has split. The only way to repair that would be to cut the corner off an undamaged shell and weld it in. That would take some serious welding talent, but its possible - I know a guy, obviously. You would then need to re-paint that quarter panel, blending up the rear pillar somewhere. FWIW, 75% of the D2s I see have had the rear quarters painted at some point. Bolt-on parts could all come from Prestige. Mike and I are about to dismantle a silver '02 4.2qs parts car so the corner could come from that, possibly also other parts which Prestige don't have (I think they do have silver-blue panels). Re-shelling is an option (in fact I have an FE shell for this exact scenario should it happen to an S8), but you would lose your car's identity in favour of the new shell. You would really need a 3.7 shell to transfer all your running gear in to, as otherwise you'd end up with a modified car (a 4.2 with a 3.7 engine for example) which is messy with insurance. You'd either need to find a donor with acceptable bodywork (expensive), or paint a scruffy one. My rescued-from-certain-death W-reg 3.7 would fit the latter category, and I'm not particularly attached to it yet so I'm open to discussions there. If you are suitably attached to it to repair it then I would suggest trying to negotiate the best cash in-lieu of repairs settlement you can from the insurance and use that to get it fixed yourself. Otherwise, get the best payout you can for them to write it off, but make sure you get to keep it. Its going to cost several thousand to fix it to an acceptable standard so you're going to end up out of pocket one way or the other :( Tell your insurance asap, whether you have the police report yet or not. Happy to help however I can obviously. |
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Oh Sergey, I am absolutely devastated for you :-(
I am currently dealing with a non-fault claim on our S5 (much less damage - just front wing, a wheel needing a refurb and a bit of paint on the front bumper) so have some recent experience. Firstly, you must absolutely notify your insurer ASAP - tonight ideally - it's a notifiable event, even if you intend not to put a claim through them. Our S5 was hit while parked and unattended, but mercifully the delivery driver involved had a conscience and left his details on the windscreen. The number on that form took us through to the accident management company for that firm. I looked at getting it sorted through them as they were offering to sort equivalent hire car etc, but it quickly became clear they are predominantly aiming at the fleet market in terms of the quality of their repair centres - they just want vehicles back on the road ASAP, and none were Audi approved. I am now going through my own insurer (Admiral on this car) and it is booked in to a semi-local Audi main dealer who have a bodyshop on site (branch of Harwoods, who previously repaired my wife's Xsara Coupe after another bodyshop left it bent when they did a quick repair on the insurance many years ago without jigging the car first!) One point of note is that insurance companies will have different acceptable standards of repair (read 20mm of filler!) compared to Audi (more like 2mm) which will result in more panel replacement. You are within your rights to demand it is at least assessed by an Audi approved bodyshop, particularly due to the aluminium construction. Details here: http://audiapprovedrepair.co.uk/ Worth at least having it assessed - but worth calling to make sure they can deal with aluminium panels as there's several in your area. The guilty party here needs to return you to the same position you were in before the collision. That means an immaculate 3.7 A8 alternative, or your car made good to your satisfaction. If the car cannot be realistically replaced, talk to your insurer about using your legal cover to check how far you can push for a repair, irrespective of the cost. It might be cheaper for the insurer to write your car off, but if that doesn't put you back to the position you were in before (the owner of a mint D2 3.7) so you can insist on a repair. Only at that point do you then need to decide whether any quality of repair is going to be acceptable to you - I know how fastidious you are, so finding someone who understands how important it is for the car to be returned to looking like new is key there. If you aren't confident, then accepting that's the end of the road and dealing with the salvage to ensure other cars benefit from all the work you've done is probably the best you can hope for. Ask yourself this - if you were buying a car today and could buy anything, what would it be? If the answer isn't automatically a D2 3.7 then it's probably not worth the aggravation that'll be involved in trying to deal with it. Get proper legal advice, whether through your car insurance if you get it, or check your house insurance too Best wishes Adrian |
Thanks everyone for your kind words!!
I notified my insurance company (Aviva) by filling form online describing situation. Those who know the world of car insurance in the UK: It looks like I'm about to claim against policy of the other guilty driver. His 3rd party policy should cover up to 'millions' of £££ of damage, but it looks like the claim will be capped by market value of the car (or was it 70% of market value). Is that correct? Here is the hypothetic scenario: I'm driving a worthless car with market value of £1,000 Someone smashed my car. Since this is an old car the proper repair cost to original pre-accident condition will cost £20,000 Can I claim £20,000 from guilty car insurance driver? From what I read here all I can have is £700 (70% of market value) minus excess? Thank you friends!! +++ |
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