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Driving and insuring a Cat B car


Dick Longbridge

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I spotted a Cat B previous flood damage car for sale. The seller has owned and driven it since 2014. They have insured it through Flux 'Cat B cover' apparently, but they recommend the car is either broken or exported by the new owner as the insurance cover is allegedly very expensive.

I always thought Cat B was 'crush only'. How's this car slipped the net, and is there really insurance cover available for something which shouldn't exist? Weird.

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Of course! Most of the time it will cost exactly the same as for one that hasn't been written off!

 

Ensure it hasn't been flooded with shit and make sure the ventilation system isn't harbouring legionnaires disease.

 

The catagory thing is just something the insurance companies made up between them it's not a law that cat A or B were break only.

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Cat A might be crush only, Cat B might be spares only, but those are guidelines invented by the MIB rather than DVLA rules.

Of course, they scratch their own backs so if you try and buck the system you might find that insurers are unwilling to show that their "rules" aren't rules at all, but this Flux thing might be worth following up with a phone call to check it's true.

 

Interestingly. this cropped up in my newsfeed recently. A Ferrari was apparently seized by the cops for being uninsured, but one of the reports suggests that the reason they crushed it was that it was Cat B and they claimed it shouldn't have been on the road and hence any insurance would have been invalid. The owner is currently taking the police to court.

 

 

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/moment-200k-ferrari-crushed-police-12215046

 

Is this another example of insurers creating their own little bubble of law? Government mandated cover run by private companies doing whatever they feel like?

 

Edit: Sorry about the Daily Mail logo on the video, but it's a Mirror link so hopefully that's better.

If you PM me I'll send out a small sticker to place over your screen whilst you view the video, obscuring the logo.

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Bloody hell, absolute vandals. There is absolutely no legitimate reason to have done that to a Ferrari. It may well have been a cut 'n shut death trap and its owner a right dodgy geezer, but it should still have been broken for parts at the very least.

 

I hope he wins and whoever decided doing that would be a good idea loses their job.

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Don't want to derail the thread but it'd always occurred to me that as soon as you sign the "official" document or V5 for the object you've just paid ?,000K  for that item no longer belongs to you. You've just signed it over to someone else who can do what the fuck they want with it. You are the "registered keeper" after that point, you no longer own it or they couldn't take it off you and crush it on a whim.

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The categories have recently changed A and B are still the same though.

A whole car crush no parts to be used again.

B shell crushed parts can be reused.

C is now S structural damage.

D is now N for none structural with cosmetic damage.

 

Although it's still a guy with a clipboard who stands and looks at a car and says that's an A/B/S/N and they do get it wrong occasionally (quite a bit really)

 

Fresh water flood used to be classed as D and any flood with possible sewer contamination was always supposed to be A

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Interestingly. this cropped up in my newsfeed recently. A Ferrari was apparently seized by the cops for being uninsured, but one of the reports suggests that the reason they crushed it was that it was Cat B and they claimed it shouldn't have been on the road and hence any insurance would have been invalid. The owner is currently taking the police to court.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

https://www.mirror.c...police-12215046

 

A case of police destroying the evidence before they have properly proved it or .....

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That Cat B Ferrari wasn't correctly insured, but more importantly was suspected of being rebuilt with stolen bits. I guess it wasn't broken as the Police can hardly be seen selling stolen car parts! The bloke who owns it is a thorough c**t by all accounts, so no tears here.

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I think in the case of the ferrari it would be up to the owner to prove its not stolen, rather than the police to prove that it is.

 

If you have bought a car, or parts to build one, through any sort of legitimate means, there will be a paper trail of some kind, even of its just ebay invoices for parts that later turn out to be stolen but you didn't know.

 

Pretty sure the rozzers don't crush stuff at random, and there must have been at least a decent suspicion that the fezza was stolen, and a lack of proof that it wasn't from the owner.

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Bloody hell, absolute vandals. There is absolutely no legitimate reason to have done that to a Ferrari. It may well have been a cut 'n shut death trap and its owner a right dodgy geezer, but it should still have been broken for parts at the very least.

 

I hope he wins and whoever decided doing that would be a good idea loses their job.

 

 

No.It should have been crushed. It was a Cat B, rebuilt using stolen parts. If it were to be broken up and the bits sold:

 

1. Who does that, sells the bits and does the admin?

 

2. You're okay with the cops basically selling nicked/wrong car parts?

 

 

No, they did the right thing. The owner is a horrible cunt who thought he was above the law. Good luck with your court case when the cops start probing a bit deeper into your legitimate business:-D

 

Cat B is Cat B for a reason.

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No.It should have been crushed. It was a Cat B, rebuilt using stolen parts. If it were to be broken up and the bits sold:

 

1. Who does that, sells the bits and does the admin?

 

2. You're okay with the cops basically selling nicked/wrong car parts?

 

 

No, they did the right thing. The owner is a horrible cunt who thought he was above the law. Good luck with your court case when the cops start probing a bit deeper into your legitimate business. :-D

 

Cat B is Cat B for a reason.

Don't disagree with any of it other than of they could trace where the stolen parts came from then contact said insurance company the parts could then be legitimately sold on (in fact I think the car could be put on a q etc but I'm not 100% sure if this is still the case, I bought a car like this before)?

 

It's a hard one as the police want to make a point that crime doesn't pay but I still think an already classic car like that, especially of that value, could have been broken for future generations to repair/enjoy theirs.

 

Just my feelings on it, get some good from it, sell the parts and put the money towards helping the police even.

 

They do annoy me at times,I had my wallet stolen in work the other week and it was used in a few shops with CCTV, I contacted them and they've said they're onto it and investigating all leads. That was nearly a month ago now and I've heard nothing, there were at least 5 other people that had stuff stolen, some even had brand new car keys taken but no doubt they won't bother to chase it up any further as we're not really that important, probably cite a lack of resources but crushing expensive cars is ok?

 

Just feels like double standards sometimes.

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Don't want to derail the thread but it'd always occurred to me that as soon as you sign the "official" document or V5 for the object you've just paid ?,000K  for that item no longer belongs to you. You've just signed it over to someone else who can do what the fuck they want with it. You are the "registered keeper" after that point, you no longer own it or they couldn't take it off you and crush it on a whim.

 

u wot m8?

 

That sounds like borderline Freeman On The Land tinfoil hattery.

 

Of course you own it and being the registered keeper doesnt change that. Ownership is easy to prove via a receipt for a transaction and being the registered keeper is a completely different concept of responsibility for a vehicle. You can be one, or the other, or both.

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Don't disagree with any of it other than of they could trace where the stolen parts came from then contact said insurance company the parts could then be legitimately sold on (in fact I think the car could be put on a q etc but I'm not 100% sure if this is still the case, I bought a car like this before)?

 

It's a hard one as the police want to make a point that crime doesn't pay but I still think an already classic car like that, especially of that value, could have been broken for future generations to repair/enjoy theirs.

 

 

 

 

It's only a 458, I wouldn't cross the road to look at one. They're either rented by Asians for weddings before being ploughed into a wall or driven by middle aged car dealers. 

 

Cat B stuff is a problem. Too much is going abroad, being fixed and then coming back. Cat B's should have the roof cut off and disposed of - right, fucking well repair that.

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Simple bit of welding no problem.

 

 

Not if the roof isn't there. Not something you can make out of flat steel.........

 

The 458, just cut it in half. Then gas axe another 6 inches out of the floor.

 

It's all about making the whole thing such an utter arseache that it's not worth the bother. In an ideal world, valuable stuff like that should go somewhere like U Pull It where the buyer strips it on site and the shell gets baled or shredded.

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No.It should have been crushed. It was a Cat B, rebuilt using stolen parts. If it were to be broken up and the bits sold:

 

1. Who does that, sells the bits and does the admin?

 

2. You're okay with the cops basically selling nicked/wrong car parts?

 

 

No, they did the right thing. The owner is a horrible cunt who thought he was above the law. Good luck with your court case when the cops start probing a bit deeper into your legitimate business:-D

 

Cat B is Cat B for a reason.

 

Yes, and as far as I can see in this thread we've established that that reason is because insurance companies have decreed it should be so, not because it has any basis in actual law. And to answer your questions:

 

1. Copart, Motorhog, or probably more appropriately in this case, one of the many specialist supercar breakers.

 

2. I wasn't suggesting that the police just help themselves to stolen goods and flog them off...stolen parts belong to their original owner, or to the insurance company that paid out on them when they were nicked. If I had a load of parts nicked and then found that the police had recovered them and then crushed them without offering them to me back, I'd be absolutely raging.

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