Buying a cat D

[Bren]

Anybody bought a cat D? Always wondered what would happen if you claimed off your insurance?

[Snipes]

Yes I’ve had a few. One, a 924, they chipped me down on the payout but that’s a long story.

[stripped fred]

I was wondering this the other day. Also,the difference between cat c and d.

[SiC]

Generally it's supposed to be:

D = cba to repair.

C = too expensive to repair (properly).

 

System will be changing soon apparently.

[Dave_Q]

It also depends what it was and when it was written off, I've seen some absolutely munted nearly new cars which are cat D, but a 10 year old car might get a cat C for a smashed light and a big scratch.

 

New system instead of A, B, C, D is A, B, S, N, S is for structural damage and N for non-structural.

 

It's meant to make it easier to tell what damage happened rather than strictly basing it on cost to repair.

[AlabamaShrimp]

I now own a car D. The ST was hit on the front, needing a wing and light. Passenger door dented, In to the Frontera, which stopped it.

 

Not a major repair but written off*. Car over 10 year old. Cat D can be sod all really.

[Dick Cheeseburger]

I’ve owned a couple of D’s and a couple of C’s over the years. The C’s had suffered reasonably heavy frontals, and had been garage repaired. They were never right, and I inevitably regretted buying them. The D’s had previously had very light damage, repairs were spot on, and they were great cars.

Actually, on reflection, our old mk1 MX5 was a Cat C, but only had a cracked back bumper and scuffed nosecone. The reason it was C was because it was thirteen years old and low value.

 

I don’t recommend a Cat C car as a keeper, unless you need a cheap snotter, or the damage was repaired properly years previously.

 

Edit: Just spotted your title questioned Cat D’s... I’d say go for it, if it’s cheap enough, drives well, and you don’t mind having a car that will take a bit more work to shift when you come to sell it.

[spike60]

I own a Z3 2.8 which was a Cat C in 2011, the year before I bought it. it was a bolt on rear quarter panel, suspension arm, rear light and bumper. It's been a good car, no problems connected with the accident. Oddly it came with 4 keys and nowt else.

I also bought a Merc 300SE parked on a farm for 8 years and after I had it back on the road for a year I found out it was a cat D, the only thing I saw on was a front wing with poorer paint than the rest. I 'fessed up when I sold it recently.

[HMC]

It hasn't bothered me when I've owned one,but insurance companies do seem to like to wriggle where there's room, and that aspect of it is a worry for me. IIRC from personal experience esure are not keen on catergory c/d. I only found out looking at the small print, despite no alarm bells sounding when I got a quote on the vehicle. Odd as for example autotrader, with no real vested interest seems able to flag up when a car has a marker against it, yet my experience with insurers is that they are largely unaware, at least when a quote is issued.

[flat4alfa]

I think she's lovely

 

 

Verdict: go for it

 

 

[Rusty_Rocket]

My current Panda is a CAT C car.  Goodness knows what wrote it off because I can't find any evidence of fresh paint anywhere, no misaligned panels, not even any burred-up bolt heads.  It's a 2008 car so it could only have happened a maximum of 9 years ago; you'd expect to notice something but there really is nothing untoward on this car.

I say, check it out and judge the car on its condition.  There's a big difference between a pro-fixed car and something someone has screwed a second hand bumper on (over mangled panels underneath)!

[Tamworthbay]

The Doloshite was a Cat D, just a wing and bumper, would buuy agin, g8 cellar etc etc

[Eddie Honda]

Mr Haircut:

 

 

Always wondered what would happen if you claimed off your insurance?

Answer @ 5:11... they'll pay you bottom dollar.

[UltraWomble]

Almera is a C cat.

If it gets totalled Im likely to get the square root of fuck all for it.

Bovvered? 

[Guest]

 

My wee WBOD was hit while parked outside the house a few weeks ago- phoned insurance. They wrote it off unseen, put it in CAT "N". Valued it at £700, took off my excess, took off £110 for salvage and put £460 in my bank 3 days later. Repaired with scrappy parts and passed it's MOT today.. It had 2 days left when it was hit. No structural damage at all, and even the headlight aim wasn't affected. Cat D or N means nothing really- just the repair is more than usually 60% of the value of the car, repaired using genuine parts. This would have easily been £500+ in a bodyshop, plus hire cars etc.

[New POD]

A mate's Dad had an accident in a 1 week old BMW 325I estate with a 1 year old caravan in tow, which needed  

grill, radiator, bumper valance, sump, most of the front suspension, front wheels, chassis work, sump, exhaust, petrol tank and rear bumper, plus doors and wings on one side after he ran over a lorry wheel that was bouncing along the motorway. He hit it at 60 mph, and ended up turning over on the embankment.

The caravan was a write off, the car was repaired, no Category given.

 

I suspect that when he traded it in, the dealer who got it would have happily have told punters "it's never been in an accident" although the truth would be "it's never had a marker"

 

I think the system should change so that any repair work by insurers is recorded officially.

[Tamworthbay]

IMG_20171015_171658137.jpg

 

My wee WBOD was hit while parked outside the house a few weeks ago- phoned insurance. They wrote it off unseen, put it in CAT "N". Valued it at £700, took off my excess, took off £110 for salvage and put £460 in my bank 3 days later. Repaired with scrappy parts and passed it's MOT today.. It had 2 days left when it was hit. No structural damage at all, and even the headlight aim wasn't affected. Cat D or N means nothing really- just the repair is more than usually 60% of the value of the car, repaired using genuine parts. This would have easily been £500+ in a bodyshop, plus hire cars etc.

The hire car costs can often be the killer. When my Mondeo estate was bumped in the rear (5mph max) the repair costs were £600ish but as they had to wait for a panel it was over a grand on hire car costs, not an issue to me as it was non fault. I don’t understand why the big insurers with their pet repairers don’t just buy a fleet of three year old insignias/ astras/ insert other cheap car.

[Parky]

Insurers do stupid shit sometimes.

 

Mrs P's Fiat 500 got hit. Needed a new wing (very similar damage to Barry Cades Polo mentioned a few posts back). Panel wasn't too expensive, yes the paint took a few days to do but the daftest thing was it had a stripe around the car which went into the wing. For this six inch long piece of vinyl I was charged £250.

 

"WTF?" Says I. "The stripe kit from Fiat is £50!"

 

The response was basically along the lines of they wouldn't pay for a full kit as "it is a waste not to use the whole lot and it makes more sense to get someone in to manufacture the missing piece. And you have to allow for the labour in creating the piece bespoke. And let's not forget the fitting which is a very skilled job and needs trained experts".

 

I don't understand insurance sometimes. If I had realised that I would have got the bodyshop to remove the stripes from the rest of the car as it would have been cheaper. I even had some while vinyl in the garage and could have made the section myself in five minutes with a steel rule and a craft knife. Perhaps I should have done that and billed the insurer?

 

Final bill was £1500. Quality job mind.

[Bren]

The car I had seen was a cat D from 2010.

 

It had been reduced to £6k because of this.

 

A lot of money for something that insurers may not want to.pay anything like full whack for.

 

Car was 05 audi S4 avant with 88 k. Grey with red leather recaros.

[uk_senator]

A large percentage of insurance assessors don't seem to know their arses from their elbows.

I`ve seen stuff with obvious MAJOR structural damage that were rated "D", that I`d have rated C or even B, & seen countless stuff with virtually no damage rated as C.. Its bollocks.

My last 2 Jags have been purchased as salvage, both minor frontals (so light they didnt even need wing repairs), both repaired with used parts for peanuts, I`ve had one of them for 9 years & has been no bother. Never had to claim on them though, so no idea how that`d play out.

[uk_senator]

For example, scarily, this was rated as a cat D:

[Wack]

My B class is a cat C , at 2910 miles the old duffer who'd bought it collapsed at the wheel and stuffed it into a parked car , insurance fixed it but either somebody started it up with no oil in it and left it running or nobody noticed it was seized before they fixed it

 

Car was a few months old and over 32k new but a new engine was £12,000 + vat + fitting at £100+ an hour so it got written off cat C

 

I paid £11,500 or it , cost me £3000 for an engine fitted but it still had to go to merc to be programmed which was £500 so £15,000 fixed, price of a new fiesta

 

I'd buy another cat C car but only mechanical not one with the front in somebody's garden , I'd also want to see pictures of the damage if it hadn't been repaired with new parts by an approved bodyshop

 

Mine looks like a new car underneath , the headlights have their own Ecu and have to be programmed to the car to stop people stealing then breaking them

[Negative Creep]

Any truth that they're more expensive to insure?

[dsp resto]

we buy, repair and sell cat c's and d's they are not as scary as you think,we also sell them with full mot( not from us either) most of them are repairable with second hand parts which cuts the cost a hell of a lot, e-bay  being your friend for most parts. so long as you tell the customer and show previous pics of damage and of course price them right we have never had a problem.

[Wack]

No , never even asked , nothing on the proposal form about whether it's ever been written off

[timolloyd]

Ditto. Never been asked or queried by insurers. We've been running a Cat D Bini for a couple of years now, which apparently was tanked in to a high curb early in it's life.

 

Looking at the abysmal state of most used Binis at 10 years old, I'd rather have an 'honest' cat D at the same price as one that hasn't seen fresh oil or a spanner for 20k miles. Which is most of them.

 

That said, I've had real trouble selling the Bini and I suspect Cat D puts off a lot of ordinary punters.

[Spottedlaurel]

My Camry estate was declared a Cat C after it got hit up the back. It was 20 years old at the time and the repair costs using new parts were £3500, so pretty understandable that it got written-off. An assessor didn't come out to look at it, we just decided on a mutually agreeable sum over the phone. The basic repair were easily carried out by Wuvvum and myself bolting-on a used tailgate I had in stock.

 

Now there is no VIC process to go through I was concerned about what the insurers would say. Footman James happily accepted it on my multicar classic policy after I clearly told them about its history. They just requested that it had an MoT, and they wouldn't give an agreed value (unlike the others on the policy).

 

I'd probably be a bit more sceptical if I was buying something declared as Cat C/D or whatever (certainly if it was as either of our 'proper' family cars).

[Hendry]

An old dear changed lanes and drove into the side of my Astra H when it was 7 years old and I got paid out £3500 for it, but at one point I was tempted to foot the bill myself as it was just needing a new door and some paint and I knew they’d right it off and pay me out, and I didn’t like the idea of buying it back as salvage with a marker on it. I’d just personally never buy/own a car with a marker against it.

 

I knew this car inside out, knew it’s history from new, knew it had been maintained properly, it’d had a shitload of money spent on it and I knew the money they’d pay me out may buy a similar age/mileage/spec car but needing all the stuff done I’d done to mine.

 

I also think some cars should never be allowed back on the road (I know some like burn outs and Cat A/B aren’t but that Sprinter van Cat D shouldn’t ever be allowed on the road again, to me that van is scrap/a breaker.)

[cort1977]

I've had Cat D cars, if you claim off your insurance they will chip you down even more than they usually do.

 

At the Autoshite end of the market I wouldn't give it a second thought.

[Bren]

Who was it on here that bought the audi S4 avant?