Totaled vehicles...sometimes surprising.
I’ve often wondered how the large numbers of “rebuilt” vehicles with “light damage” for sale can be real and not just a line of bs by the seller. Had one example years ago. Guy at work literally “ta...
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pitch wrote:
But we keep asking for more bells and whistles, more electronics more systems more conectability.
Every little option boosts the insurance rates, make it more technical harder to diagnose and repair. easier to total!
Lots of moving parts here....yes, feature-rich vehicles have a higher cash value, but the the repair cost is disproportionately higher because of diagnostic time. Also these electronic components are so expensive, there is high demand for used parts, which is inflating the salvage value of these cars. The higher repair cost combined with the higher salvage value is outstripping the higher ACV of these wrecked cars.
There are also many questionable repair facilities that focus on making the repair LOOK good, but may not correctly repair engineered features like crumple zones, etc. Without a qualified inspection it's really hard for even knowledgeable car guys to spot the mistakes unless you are intimately familiar with that specific make/model.
You can easily get liability insurance for a salvage vehicle so registering/driving is not an issue. What you can't get is collision and comprehensive, which means that nobody will finance the vehicle.
