Minor Panic: They Won't Write off My M5 Will they?

[M5Lover]

So following the attempted theft of my E60 M5 the other day....BMW estimate £4,000 worth of damage and the insurance assessor is off to inspect it on Monday/Tuesday. I was chatting with a friend this weekend who thought that they may write it off because the Glass' valuation will a very low figure and the salvage value quite large.....now I'm panicking. Glass' Guide has trade-in values of £8-11K for an E60 M5 (much, much less than I think mine is worth).

Am I panicking over nothing? Is there anything I can do?

[scarebus]

Hi,
I thought a car would only get written off if the repair bill was more than the current value of the car.
Good luck, sorry to hear about the thieving pricks.

[AW10]

I would have thought BER (beyond economical repair) was more like when repair costs approach the 50-60% range of the retail value. I wouldn't worry about it being written off - the ratio of the repair cost versus the replacement cost isn't high enough.

[M5Lover]

Great...that's a relief.

The chap in the claims department at Aviva said it's usually around 60%, but my friend said that sometimes if the salvage value is high relative to the trade-in value it might be uneconomic to repair it. So if it's worth £5K and they'd only give me £8K if they write it off that would be cheaper than paying for the repairs.

But I'm glad that's not how they work it out as it would be a shame.

[Siscar]

You've had two people answer with 'I (would have) thought', so I'd not get your hopes up that anyone really knows.

In my extremely limited experience they look at the scrap value + repair value versus the amount they'd pay out if written off and go for the cheaper! at least that's what appeared to happen when my 911 was written off. But I did want it written off so that may have influenced the persons assessing it.

Edited by Siscar on Monday 7th April 12:18

[M5Lover]

Small update, the salvage company quoted £9,000 for it in its current state. Still waiting on the assessor...we'll see what happens.

[MadProfessor]

M5Lover said:

Small update, the salvage company quoted £9,000 for it in its current state. Still waiting on the assessor...we'll see what happens.

That's interesting....I'm considering putting my M5 up for sale and the standard low ball trade-in offer I had for (admittedly not a BMW garage) was a little under £12K. It would seem uneconomic to repair it based on BMW prices but I'd imagine some cheap secondhand parts, a respray and a quick re-listing on eBay as a Cat D could turn a quick profit for somebody enterprising.

But I'm not sure insurance companies go to that much trouble. I'm sure they have some simple formula such as if the repairs are more than x% of trade value then write if off. In which case you should be fine...if they started writing off every car where the repairs were only a third of the value there would be a lot of scrap metal about.

If they do decide to write it off DO NOT accept their first offer. Make sure you find good comparisons for sale at present.

[M5Lover]

Panic over. After a week of waiting....the engineer finally approved the repair. Now I've just got to wait 3 weeks for it to be done!!!